9 





Book . T "^ 

Copyright N^ 

COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



SONGS rPOM 
EDGCWOOD 



Bv 



-y 



STEPHEN HENRY THAYEP 

Author of " Songs of Sleepy Hollow, ' ' eta 



^ 



^ 



G. P. PUTNAH'S SONS 
New YorK and London 
Cbe IRnicfterbocfter press 

1902 



THE i-'tSKArfV a> 
Ct«S» /:t^VXr No. 



1^^ 3^ 






T4 



Copyright, 1902 

BY 

STEPHEN HENRY THAYER 



Published, November, 190a 



Ube ftnichecbocfcec pcese« View ISorft 






Many of these poems have been printed in period- 
icals and magazines; a number of them, however, 
have never been submitted to the test of publication. 

Edgewood, December, ipo2. 



CONTENTS 








PAGB 

The Home of the Pocantico . . . . i 


Drink Deep, O Eyes! Drink De 
Europa .... 
In the Autumn Garden-Close 


3p, O 


Vein 


s! 


3 
6 

9 


Ecce Signum ! . 

Aurora's Gift to Tithonus . 








II 

12 


In the House Where We Dwell 








'7 


A Song from Sleepy Hollow 
The Violin .... 








19 

21 


The Sword 










24 


No More Ever More ! 










26 


Faith . 
O Time! . 
Strangers . 
Ye Mountains . 










27 
28 

31 


Reminiscence . 










33 


Night Watches 

Voice of the Wind-Harp 










35 
3^ 


Love and Death 










38 


In the Cathedral 










39 


The Portrait 










42 


To the Victor . 










44 



VI 



CONTENTS 



The Trees 

The Master 

Alone 

The Wise Worldling 

In Spirit . 

Mystere . 

Song of the Sea 

O Realist! 

Beyond . 

Yonder . 

Midsummer Ode to Indolence 

Unreconciled . 

The Triumph of Song 

O War Ship! . 

Could Hand Have Led 

Contrasted 

Song 

In Port . 

Night Watches . 

Fallen 

"Nay, Death" . 

Who Has the Clue ? 

A Song of the Saranac Camp 

Out of the Depths 

Seaward . 

The Grave of Helen Hunt Jackson (H 

Inviolate 



H.) 



CONTENTS 




vii 


■etiGB. 


Doom Days 8i 


Birds of Sleepy Hollow 






. 83 


A Picture .... 


• • 




. 86 


The American Soldier Boy 






• 87 


Estranged .... 






. 89 


Unveiled .... 






. 90 


On the Summit! 






• 92 


Written in an Album 






• 93 


Might-Have-Been 






95 


Demence .... 






. 96 


The Tides 






. 98 


Avant et Apres 






. 99 


Oh ! the Subtile Knowing . 






100 


Fate — Destiny 






102 


Dead, Dead! .... 






103 


The House of Life . 






105 


Autumn Song of the Wood and 


Grasses 




107 


Fragments 






109 


Beyond the Night . 






no 


I Could Not Know . 






III 


Old Roses .... 






115 


Rappeler . . . . 






114 


In Bonds 






115 


The City Undertown 






116 


The Bugle-Trumpets 






118 


Prophetic .... 
Apart 






120 
122 



vin 



CONTENTS 



Winter in Sleepy Hollow Woods 

"Love and Life Came, Passing By" 

A Hymn of Peace 

On the Wing . 

Come, Deft Fancy . 

Only Dust to Dust . 

"Mine" . 

Peace 

The New Year's Legacy 

The Reign of Mars . 

Thy Thought of Me . 

Were I in Love 

The Wanderer . 

When Night Steals On 

My Fair Sixteen 

True Eminence. 

Stoic-Wise 

I Watched and Watched 

In the Hushed Gloaming 

I Watched Her Read 

Retour a la Vie 

Beauty 

Castaly 

To Oliver Wendell Holmes 

Winter Woods 

In Mountain Mist 

Was it a Dream ? 



CONTENTS 






ix 


PAGE 


The Giant and the Pigmies . . . .162 


To-Day! .... 








163 


Winter in the Adirondacks 








164 


The Two Sisters 








165 


En Route .... 








166 


"0 Glory in the Gloom!" 








. 167 


Regrets! .... 








168 


White Face 








169 


Lowell .... 








. 170 


On That Glad Day . 








171 


Peace .... 








172 


Death— Life 








173 


Renunciation .... 








174 


Broken Gods . 








175 


To Winter .... 








176 


The Queen of Song . 








177 


Evolution .... 








178 



THE HOME OF THE POCANTICO 

DOWN from the cliffs of Ossining, 
Into the hollows below, 
Vexed as with alternate passion and pain, 

Flows the river Pocantico. 
Surging, eddying, veering in vain, 

It dances and delves, a thing of life ; 

It sleeps in pools, it bickers in strife, 
And turns on itself again and again 
Over the cliffs of Ossining, 

Into the hollows below. 

Down from the cliffs of Ossining, 

Out of the hollows below, 
Far through fallow and glen it glides. 

Heavy with sighs, as loth to go; 
Hushed in the haunted wood it hides, 

Lonesome for love of its springs afar 

Up in the hills, where the evening star 
Drops fire-threads over silvery slides — 
Down on the cliffs of Ossining, 

Down in the hollows below. 



THE HOME OF THE POCANTICO 

O for the cliffs of Ossining! 

O for the hollows below! 
The stones uprise in watery guise, 

And build their mimic bars arow; 
The driftwood rallies, yeomanwise, 

As if to stay the helpless river 

That downward flows forever and ever, — 
That whispers, and moans, and faintly cries: 
" O for the cliffs of Ossining! 

O for the hollows below ! " 

Far from the cliffs of Ossining, 

Far from the hollows below. 
It lags through marshy meadow and lea 

With leaden feet, and heart as slow. 
As if in dread of the thirsty sea — 

The sea that drinks and drinks for aye, 

Through all the centuries and a day — 
The waters that flow eternally 
Down from the cliffs of Ossining, 

Down from the hollows below! 



DRINK DEEP, O EYES! DRINK DEEP, O 

VEINS! 

ENTRANCED, in dim night, I gaze. 
As vagrant wandering idle ways, 
With brain beguiled to deeps of slumberous 
draughts ; 
Sleep foldeth me in drowsy maze, 

My senses lulled by soft, ambrosial wafts 
Of airs from dreamland, foldeth me 
In mists as on a vaporous sea. 

Unbidden are these opiate charms 
That lure the soul to listless calms. 

That lay all burning passions of the mind; 
Sirens, that wind their covert arms 

About my willing spirit, witchingly they wind, 
Then whisper, magic-tongued, until 
They snare me captive, spite of will. 

Yet vanish not away, weird sprites, 
Invisible in day's fierce lights. 

Wait ye on me ; I would that ye might weave 

3 



J. DRINK DEEP 

Your spells about my troublous nights, 
About my fearful fancy ; e'en deceive 
Me to unconsciousness, as erst. 
In child days, I was fondly nursed. 

And, Love, inveigle me to try 
Thy fate, till from a breathless sigh 

The spectral eyes of some fair, phantom face 
Shall steal down, azure as the sky, 

To fade and vanish from my shadowy gaze ; 
So I shall grieve as one alone. 
As homeless winds that moan and moan. 

Thou hast thy joys, O wandering Brain ! 
How lightly art thou vexed with pain. 

When in the stilly hours thy tangled thought 
Flies, wing-shod, through the meshy skein 

Of many a devious web, or, near distraught. 
Goes tripping blindly through vague years 
Of time, and chance, and mythic tears. 

And thou, O Sleep, art serpent-wise; 
When ecstasy hath dazed mine eyes. 

Or fancy builded Heaven-touched fanes to draw 
My thought, half-drunken, to the skies. 

Then thou redeemest, by thy silent law, 
The mind o'erwrought and leadest it 
To bring truth to its homelier wit. 



DRINK DEEP i 

Thou night of sleep dost balance ill, 
Dost aid, with nice, adjusting skill, 

By happy arts, to win from wantonness 
The trembling nerves that throb and thrill; 

To hold men bound, and yet to free and bless 
As some divinity; enchain 
And slave me, so to free again ! 

Drink deep, O eyes! Drink deep, O veins! 
For blood is purer for your gains ; 

The clod shall find its swifter feet and wing. 
The soul shall quicken heart and brains, 

The spirit wake with new-born notes to sing. 
And Love shall come with sweeter kiss. 
To measure out its matchless bliss. 
Drink deep, O eyes! Drink deep, O veins! 



EUROPA 

GREAT Sovereign of the earth and sea, 
Whose sceptre shall forever be 
The reign, supreme, of Liberty, 
Draw Thou the veil that dims our sight; light Thou 
our eyes. 

That we may see! 

Beyond the waters, east and west, 
Six giant legions ominous rest. 
Equipped and armed from sole to crest; 
The burdened nations groan and reel, and listen for 
The dread behest. 

The Ottoman, by the JEgean tide 
Is bonded; there the navies ride 
And train their armaments to bide 
The menace from the eagle's north, or who will dare 
The kings allied. 

The cringing Sultan can but wait 
The will of other crowns ; his fate 
Is graven in the hearts that hate 
6 



EURO PA 7 

And tremble at his wasting power, — the curse of 
men, — 

So weak, so great. 

His doom is written in the skies; 
His Orient Empire palsied lies, 
And still and still he crucifies 
The last bare hope that yet might save, and mocks 
his knell, 

And still defies. 

I hear the empires muttering now. 
The northern Caesar keeps his vow, 
And waits and wills both where and how 
His sheathless sword shall smite at last; he waits, 
and knits 

His iron brow. 

I see the Austrians mustering where 
The Adriatic's waters glare, 
Or by the Danube; and they swear 
Eternal vigilance against the Cossack hordes 
So sleepless there. 

The crafty Chancellor, outworn, 
Who guards the German State, in scorn 
Watches the French frontier — his thorn ; 
Looks north to the Crimean gates, and eastward to 
The Golden Horn. 



8 EUROPA 

Europa waits the signal; swells 
Imperial armies ; still compels — 
From Britain to the Dardanelles — 
Fresh millions to her warrior camps, and millions 
more 

For ships and shells. 

Till on her mighty martial field 
The greatest product she can yield 
Are armed men and sword and shield: 
Whole nations bent and strung for what? O Lord, 
Thy thought 

Is still concealed! 

Great Sovereign of the earth and sea, 
Whose sceptre shall forever be 
The reign, supreme, of Liberty, 
Draw Thou the veil that dims our sight; light Thou 
our eyes, 

That we may see! 



IN THE AUTUMN GARDEN-CLOSE 

IN the autumn garden-close 
Neither lily nor the rose 
Greets me, nor can one there see 
Fruit or foliage on the tree : 
In the boughs no birds shall sing, — 
Southward flew they, fleet of wing, 
While along the crannied wall 
Prone the vine, — its leaves let fall; 
There the sere and pallid stocks, 
Robbed of sheaves and silken shocks, 
Ghostly stand, and by the hedge, 
Rifled of its blood-stained pledge, 
Lies the strawberry bed, alas ! 
Tangled in the weedy grass; 
In the autumn garden-close 
All is lifeless as the rose! 

In the autumn garden-close, 
Where the lily and the rose 
Lifeless lie like some lost bliss, 
Dream I of a fancied kiss ; 
9 



lO IN THE A UTUMN GARDEN CLOSE 

There a faintly visioned form — 
Lily-white, yet rosy- warm — 
Leans against the parapet, 
Thrilling all my being yet; 
Phantom feet tread lightly there ; 
Sunshine melts in golden hair; 
Airy songs escape sweet lips, 
Fairy, tapering finger-tips 
Pluck the lily and the rose 
In the autumn garden-close. 

There a gracious smile once stirred 
My fool-heart to say the word; 
There — ah! there 1 whispered low, 
"Love," to which she answered "No!" 
"No," that made the garden-close 
Desolate as winter snows! 

Yet, I cannot tell you why, 

In that place — though now shall sigh 

Drearily the autumn winds, — 

My mute loneliness still finds 

Love — though lifeless as the rose — 

Sacred in its garden-close. 



ECCE SIGNUM ! 
(in memory of e. c. k.) 

IN the dark night, the night of sleep, 
I, gazing upward through the deep, 
See thee, pale moon, thy vigil keep. 

Thou hauntest earth though thou art dead; 
A wandering spectre, garmented 
In ghostly lustre overhead. 

Marvel, O heart, that death can hold 
Such fire, drawn from the burning gold 
Of the great sun, and yet be cold ; 

That death, so clothed in radiant light, 
A glory in the gloom of night, 
Is yet itself but dust and blight. 

Sweet face ! thou, too, dost sacred shine, 
Though dead; foreshadowing some divine, 
Undying beauty, as a sign 

That death is life beyond — afar. 
Reviving in some peerless star, 
Where souls beloved immortal are. 



AURORA'S GIFT TO TITHONUS 

AND thou, Tithonus, wouldst thou live for aye ? 
The gods will mock thee in thy vast desire: 
Couldst thou but know the bitterness that falls 
To lonely hearts, thou wouldst not make thy plea 
For earth's poor moiety when Heaven is thine! 
These are thy dreamful days when fair eyes gleam 
As stars, and airy songs are tipped with love; 
When every springtide zephyr doth diffuse 
Its sweet intoxicant from roses, rare ; 
When morn is jewelled with an amber dew, 
Whose every drop reflects a golden world. 
Thy heart hath never known impassioned days 
Pale to the sere ; thy brow hath never borne 
The burden of parched noon, nor thy leal thought 
The soul-sick chill of loss, irreparable; 
If, by the slightest tilt, some glittering prize 
Hath fallen from thy grasp, a luminous hope 
Hath lightened up the way wherein it fell. 
And, shining on it there, hath won it back. 
Swift fancy spans thy blithesome world for thee, 
And deftly turns it round and round, — a spell 



AURORA'S GIFT TO TITHONUS 1 3 

Of wonder to thy radiant eyes — to fill 

Thy being with delight; sweet murmurings 

The wanton brook sings to thy listening ear: 

Wild echoings from feathered throats outburst 

To thrill thine eager nerves with ecstasy ! 

And thus, Tithonus, life enchants thy soul. 

Oh, who would talk of death 'mid such fair days ! 

T is well; long may thy trysting heart be glad. 

Yet the grim shadows will their darkness bring; 

Clear skies will overcast betimes, the bright 

Sun vanish in eclipse, and the pale moon 

Gleam no more on lover eves. Joy will flee; 

Woes will come ; Memory then will weave its thoughts 

Of years outlived, and mend with fragile thread 

The tattered remnants of lost time. The torch 

Of hope will fade to gloom, the hours of love 

To darkness. Thou must bear the growing weight 

While ever lessening strength will mark thy life. 

Deem not the gods unkind; they cannot fill 

Disconsolate hearts with buoyance, nor retrieve 

The waste that overtakes the mortal frame. 

Thy limbs, Tithonus, bear mortality. 

Couldst thou command a stay — block the huge globe 

That now revolves in circled grooves of time, 

Decay would still leave cankering mould on all, — 

Pale Death blight beauty's charm with its dread touch! 



14 AURORA'S GIFT TO TITHONUS 

So Earth would make fresh graves for all — save thee. 
Thou canst not change the bitterness of earth; 
And yet its loneliness is lit by stars 
That glimmer in the sullen dark, — Heaven's stars! 
What undergloom must veil the soul foredoomed 
To mock its longing with a hopeless fate! 

This prison-house of time bequeaths a boon; 
Its boltless doors — ajar — are hinged to move, 
And swinging wide, shall free, at last, the soul! 
It cannot languish alway ; destiny, 
So large, has marked for it high, infinite 
Beatitudes that widen to the light. 
How can it live forever here on sweets 
Sipped to the barren husk ? how can it bear 
Reviving worn-out dreams of bitterness. 
Or death without its sacred elegy, — 
Without a prophecy of life beyond ? 

brave heart, now so soon to fall away! 
Thou, fair Aurora, tinged with morning fire, — 
So gifted, yet so light, — see'st thou the gloom 
That crowns Tithonus' drooping head e'en now ? 
And thou, whose love-born pleadings won her grace. 
Dost thou not feel the arrow that must pierce 
Worse than the barb of death ? And dost forget 
The high transmission of the soul to Heaven ? 



AURORA'S GIFT TO TITHONUS 1 5 

So, SO, Tithonus, 't is thy triumph day, — 
Thou weav'st the net that evermore must hold 
Thy spirit to its clay-built walls. Think not 
Of any future joy, — of life divine,7- 
That soars persistent in a flameless day; 
Thy home is earth. O life in death, 't is thine! 

Another and another shall depart 

Until no friend shall greet thee, no loved guest 

Shall tread thy chambers, and thy lonely walls 

Shall break in hollow tones; an ancient voice 

Shall moan of vanished years in murmurs low, 

Till eyes shall dim, and ears shall dull, and lips 

Be mute, and ghostly thoughts shall die away : 

No odorous zephyrs — to thy deadened sense — 

Shall bring thee sweets; thy slackened form shall 

shrink, 
Thy nerves shall palsy, and thy flickering mind, 
Like some spent taper, burn to nothingness; 
Still, thou, Tithonus, creeping up and down, 
A spectral apparition, wan and faint. 
Shall cling to the pale shadow of thy life. 

O Immortality, so mocked! O Hope, 

So palled that the jet wings of night are white! 

O black and fathomless abyss, endless 

Of time! O Misery, where every spark 



l6 AURORA'S GIFT TO TITHONUS 

Of faith and love is blotted out of day ! 
Yet never end to come, — crumbling to dust 
Forever and forever! This thy boon — 
Goddess of Light — to brave Tithonus given; 
Earth, earth forever; never, never Heaven! 



IN THE HOUSE WHERE WE DWELL 

IN the house where we dwell, 
Lo, a shadow dwelleth now; 
Knowest thou when, dark, it fell ? 
Can thy lips its secret tell ? 

Wilt thou answer — ay, wilt thou — 
In the house where we dwell ? 

In the house where we dwell. 

Love's words murmured their dead vow! 
Knowest thou, or canst thou tell 
Where love, prone and dying, fell — 

By what secret weapon — how, 
In the house where we dwell ? 

In the house where we dwell, 

Dost recall the answer low, 
When thy lover's last words fell ? 
What was it, heart, canst thou tell 

Of the love that loved thee so — 
In the house where we dwell ? 

In the house where we shall dwell. 
In its gates beyond our reach, 
17 



1 8 IN THE HOUSE WHERE WE DWELL 

From whose height lost angels fell, 
Shall love, there, our souls impel, — 

Bind us, spirits, each to each, — 
In the house where we shall dwell ? 



A SONG FROM SLEEPY HOLLOW 

COVET I no laden barges 
Of rich stuffs from India's coast, 
No strong wines or wasted largess 

Dainty epicures may boast; 
Care I not for these, or any 
Sweet beguilements for the many. 

Musing by these limpid waters, 
Rest I, with a heart at ease ; 

Not the Orient and the lotus. 
With their paradise of peace, 

Could console my spirit's dreaming. 

As this spring-tide forest teeming. 

Over pebbly shoals, in laughter, 
Sings the brook, or in the deeps 

Lies in pools, and sighs in softer 
Lulls of music where it sleeps, 

Much like any child, uncaring 

How the troubled world is faring. 
19 



20 A SONG FROM SLEEPY HOLLOW 

Low winds whisper where the nestlings 
Tip the twigs against the blue, 

And the hermit in the west sings — 
Sweeter notes I never knew — 

Notes from some diviner psalter 

Than from templed choir or altar. 

Envy I no jaded spirit 
Wandering from mart to mart, 

Listening — though he never hear it — 
For the song that fills my heart; 

I, who haunt this dreamland, cherish 

Loves that in the world would perish. 



THE VIOLIN 

FROM out the open casement near, 
Ecstatic strains subdue the ear — 
Mingling with moonlight, mild and clear. 

No harper, nay, nor magic flute, 
No dulcimer nor languid lute — 
Nor bugle — with its brave salute, — 

Nor any martial music blown 
By trumpeter soever known, 
(Or e'er the impulse of its tone,) 

Can match the matchless violin, 
As from the casement there within 
Its wizard lyre lulls other din. 

What overtures its spirit makes! 
What slumb'rous memories it wakes — 
As wooing, wailing, sobbing, breaks 

Upon the stillness of the night 

Those weird heartrendings of delight — 

Transmuting darkness into light ! 



22 THE VIOLIN 

Its voice — a human cry — portends 
Of mythic ills, and vaguely blends 
With breathings — tragic-wrought — or lends 

A spell, like murmuring, midnight toll — 
Prophetic of a dreaded dole 
Lamenting to the listening soul! 

Now from its throat a vibrant air — 
High pitched — as if in piteous prayer — 
Turns wantonly to laughter there ; 

Now deftly falls to accents, faint; 
The viol-chords, in hushed constraint, 
Plead tremulous — a lover's plaint : 

Fear — hopeless of a hovering fate — 
As 't were hope born a moment late, 
Intreats Love to compassionate; 

Then treacherous storms — tempestuous — ^fall 
Athwart its strings, that frenzied — call 
In mad confusion, and inthrall 

The tranced spirit with their pain. 
And stir the heart till it seem fain 
To beat as it were passion-slain! 



THE VIOLIN 23 

So love, and hate, and tears, and scorn, — 
Midnight despair and rosy morn. 
And rapture, laughter, all are born 

To leap — succeeding — in a throng 

Of suppliant tones — or fierce or strong — 

From this witched instrument of song ! 



THE SWORD 

OVER the mantel hangs the sword, 
Sheathed in scabbard, dented and old ; 
Red scarf — tasselled and faded there — 
Clings to the hilt; never a word. 
All its battles are left untold ; 

Fighting and blood, or when or where, 
The sword speaks not, the sword is great: 
Silence is gold when acts are fate! 

Blood, did you say ? Ay — death on death ! 
Who knows ? Where is the wearer now — 
He whose right arm wielded it then ? 
Dust! with the host that breathed the breath 
Of the battle years, when the nation's vow 
Foredoomed the lives of a million men. 
Silent ! Ah yes! The man who led 
With horse and yonder sword, is dead! 

Who can tell of its flashing blade ? 
Who confess the valor it taught ? 
Where are the ranks that followed its lead ? 
24 



THE SWORD 25 

Where are the fields of carnage laid ? 

Where are the hearts that back of it fought ? 
On what page is written their meed ? 
Silent the men and their battle-cry — 
They who challenged their fate — to die! 

Powerless now on the panelled wall; 
Nerveless, — smitten like its master's hand; 
Flash gone out of its tempered steel 
Since it lay on its master's pall; 

Bound no more by the red scarf band 
Near the heart that it once could feel ; 
Never to mix again in the din — 
Or in the van to lose or to win! 

Peace is carved on the rusty sword; 
Peace is wrought in the silent stone; 
Memory crowned by Love's true art: 
Battle and Victory speak no word ; 
Sword art thou of the spirit of one 
Whom death enshrines in the reverent heart! 
Love and Honor gleam from thy blade; 
Battle and Victory fade and fade! 



NO MORE EVER MORE! 

I DREAMT as one entranced; 
I was in a garden-close; 
Stooping, I gatliered — it chanced — 
A red, red rose. 

A rose — as oft before 

I had plucked for another's hand. 
In the far-off days of yore, 

In a far-off land. 

Drooping, it fell from my grasp; 

Withered, it lay on its bed; 
I leaned and reached to clasp 

Its stem; — it was dead! 

It mouldered to dust, — the rose, — 
And the breeze its odors bore 

To her (so I dreamt, who knows ?) 
Sighing: " Love no more!" 

I awoke; the stars shone bright; 

A hushed sea-breath from the shore 
Whispered a vow to the night: 

"I love ever more! " 
26 



FAITH 

ALONE she bears the mystic flame, — 
A torch that like a star doth gleam; 
A leader, she, without a name : 
Alone she bears the mystic flame. 

A darkness falls across her way ; 
Her face is rapt as in a dream. 
Perchance she murmurs, " Where is day ? " 

She walks afar; — none other near, 

Yet by her side speed silent feet; 
Strange voices fall on her fine ear. 

She leads the way that man shall tread, — 
Whose centuries time the ceaseless beat 
Of living following the dead ; 
She leads the way that man shall tread. 



27 



O TIME! 
(a song) 

THE path led through a haunted wood, 
That, erstwhile, bore thy sandalled feet; 
O'er pebbly brook, at lover's mood, 

Through mazy wilds, by murmurs sweet, 
It trailed the dreamy solitude. 

It wound within the brooding deep, 

It rested by a mossy base 
Beneath the wide-armed oak, where creep 

The tangled vines that interlace ; 
Where maiden ferns a covert keep; 

It stole through yonder open vale; 

It curved about a sudden steep 
Where soft airs whisper, or winds wail 

Such songs as make the spirit weep, 
Or lash it to a kindred gale. 

But now the grasses overgrow; 

No maiden waits my coming there; 
The brooklet laughs, as long ago. 

Yet, yet, I never more would dare 
To breathe thy name ; thou wouldst not know. 
28 



TIME 29 

The path is lost to thee and me. 

O Time, sleep on in hushed repose: 
Vain eyes, be blind, ye cannot see! 

Nay, let the dull heartache; it knows 
That never more our love can be. 



STRANGERS 

I MAY not lisp it e'en to a spirit, — 
I, who 've a cloister of my own; 
Shut in its chrysalis none can hear it — 
The exiled thought I 'd think alone: 
Inviolate; — never a password sent 
Betrays my secret or its intent. 

Nor can I read the heart that 's near to me ; 

Snare it in its stilly recess ; 
Fathom its wish, — its love that 's dear to me; 

These, mayhap, I can only guess : 
Mured in its temple there it may be — 
Far as the stars and deep as the sea ! 

Little know we — each one — of the other; 

Only now and again a spark 
Lightens the way to the soul — to smother; 

Lost in the silence and the dark ! 
Friends — ^and yet we go all the years through 
Keeping hushed vigils ; — O if we knew ! 



30 



YE MOUNTAINS 

YE mountains, I know ye — O monarchs of earth 
and years, 
Enthroned in the clouds and peerlessly crowned as 

the seers; 
Grim prophets are ye over limitless vistas of space ; 
Ye are lordlier than the princely peers of the race ; 
Steadfast as sovereigns are ye; calm as kingdoms are 

calm 
When demons of death would arise in riot to harm! 

Peaks so wild have ye, and minarets marvellously steep, 
(Where flashing bolts of fire, like battling armies afar. 
Smite fierce, whose thunderings break from frowning 

crest and spar 
O'er cavernous passes, sheer and tragically deep,) 
That — trembling — I 'm awed of ye and th' unseen 

Lord of the hills ; 
Quivering as the harp in the storm-wind quivers and 

thrills! 

O summits of earth, where glory and splendor avail. 
Whose heavens are charged, where immanent tem- 
pests assail, 

31 



32 ¥£ MOUNTAINS 

I know, ay, I know that the gales of the wide, wild 

sea 
Call up their defiance and shout, "We are free, we 

are free ! " 

But your crags send heralds to mock in scorn their 
refrain 

What time their banners advance in their chariot- 
train ; 

These shall ye smite in your fury again and again; 

Disarm and vanquish them — hurling them back to 
the plain ! 

I haste to your heights from the dusky valleys of lust; 
I scale your cliffs and copings of adamant crust. 
Afar from the drudgings of earth and lurings of gain. 
Up to your palace of light and castles of rain. 

O might, colossus, and majesty moulded in one! — 
Ye that face the stars and challenge the infinite sun, — 
From glory to gloom and from gloom to glory ye 

rise, 
Through Alpine frost and through firmament fire, to 

the skies; 
Through seons of time— through strange mutations 

of time — 
Forever ye stand encompassed in beauty sublime ! 



REMINISCENCE 

WE were young in those halcyon years : 
O the laughter that lurked in her eyes! 
There was bliss in her heart; there were tears; 
There were Love's intercedings and sighs 
Ere the intricate world made us wise 
Since those halcyon, far-away years. 

O the laughter that lurked in her eyes! 
And the song from her lips! ay so sweet 

Are its echoes, birdlike, that arise, 
Waking memories, fragile and fleet, 
Waking bitterness strangely unmeet 

Of the laughter that lurked in her eyes. 

There was bliss in her heart, there were tears; 

And the beauty, — the light in her face! 
A vision that ever appears ; 

A wondrous marvel of grace! 

I remember the lingering delays; 
There was bliss in her heart, there were tears. 

33 



34 REMINISCENCE 

There were Love's intercedings and sighs; 

There was Hope with its saddened refrain, 
Like the rose in the bosom that dies; 

Like a joy that covers a pain 

When the ultimate vestige is vain — 
Of Love's intercedings and sighs. 

Yes, the intricate world made us wise : 
Still — still would I — brooding alone. 

Hear the pleadings of Love, — the replies, — 
When she gave me her lips and her zone 
In our trystings, ere Cupid had flown, — 

Ere the intricate world made us wise! 



NIGHT WATCHES 

ABOVE the hills the opal sky — 
A burnished shield — o 'erfloods with gold 
The summits ; bends to beautify 

The plain, and bathes the winter wold 
In one last fringe of light 
Before the shades of night! 

The dark veil deepens as dull woe 

On dreading souls ; not suddenly, 
But stealing hope with omens, slow: 

So fades the light on land and sea! 



35 



VOICE OF THE WIND-HARP 

I AM a harp whose chords are drawn 
To serenade the waking morn: 
I murmur paternosters while 
The sun reflects its hidden smile, 
And whisper — when the day is shy — 
In sighs of softest minstrelsy. 

I answer to the mournful breeze 
In low, pathetic melodies, 
As if the sad caress were set 
To soothe despair or chide regret; 
I breathe the spirit — ^tameless, free, — 
Of winds that smite the tragic sea. 
And beat in phantom waves, that sweep 
Along its own unfathomed deep ; 
I claim a kinship with the North, 
And signal ghostly echoes forth 
That wail whene'er its tempests wail 
Against the wrecks of mast and sail; 
I hear the forest dip its crest 
To storms that prey from east to west, 
36 



VOICE OF THE WIND-HARP 37 

And stir with sympathies that wake 
In tremulous rapture when they break; 
I hear the diapason swell 
Within my soul at lawless knell 
Of thunder crashing in the hills; 
I feel the hand that calms and stills. 

Lo from the south the breezes bear 
Their tropic fleet from odors rare, 
And laden every beckoning stem 
With buds that throb to welcome them; 
How blithely now the wooing note 
O 'erfloods the misty hills and moat, 
And tells a tale of winged love 
To birdling maidens far above; 
How glad the music from my strings 
Leaps upward on unpinioned wings. 
For spring-tide fills and thrills again, 
And joy shall hush the harp of pain! 



LOVE AND DEATH 

I CANNOT speak the word to her disburdened ear, 
Nor stir her marble breast, nor challenge one lost 
tear; 
The voice would fall unheard, for my Love would not 
hear. 

I cannot speak the word, nor would she understand 
The pall that overhangs and darkens all the land, — 
That stays me when I grasp her dear, unfeeling hand. 

If she could know the blight that desolates my heart. 
Could she — ay could she — then one burning glance 

impart ? 
It cannot be; nay, nay; Death has a fateful dart! 

Love burns the glowing cheek ; Love speaks in flash- 
ing word; 

Love thrills and thrills again as song-note thrills the 
bird ; 

Love moans, though it shall know it never will be 
heard ! 

So calm and pale she is, like moonlight overhead; 
So silent while I weep for one whom Heaven has wed: 
My heart — my heart will break for my Love lying 
dead! 

38 



IN THE CATHEDRAL 

SHE stole to the portal, stood 
And gazed as in a dream ; 
The priest in gown and hood 

Passed in the shadowy gleam ; 
The flickering tapers light 
The dim cathedral night. 

Unseen she passed the door, 
Up through the aisle, and fell 

On her knees on the floor; 
The chimes pealed out a knell; 

The priest in the chancel there 

Drearily droned a prayer. 

Her face, like the marble tile, 

An ashen pallor shed; 
She muttered words the while 

As lips speak to the dead ; 
Her eyes were hopelessly sad; 
She seemed heart-broke — or mad! 

39 



40 IN THE CA THEDRAL 

A Stillness bound the air; 

The echoing arches slept; 
Like spectral sentinels there 

The giant pillars kept 
A hushed watch through the place - 
The dark and hollow space. 

Hark ! from the hidden loft — 
Scarce heard — a throb awakes; 

Such music falls — as soft 

As harp-chords! now it breaks 

The thirsty silence — fills 

The choir — the vast arch thrills ! 

It sweeps the groined height; 

It frees her fettered soul ; 
She feels her spirit's flight 

Beyond her faint control ; 
She feels the icy band 
Cleft by an unseen hand. 

Prayer breathed from heart and lip; 

In ecstasy she caught 
Its power from finger-tip 

To inmost soul! it wrought 
A glory in her face — 
Lit by diviner grace. 



IN THE CATHEDRAL 4 1 

Sweet faith, that erst-while slept. 

Now burned in mystic flame; 
Her heart its rapture wept 

And banished all its shame; 
She heard ethereal wings ; 
Glad angels touched the strings! 



THE PORTRAIT 

IF e'er love challenges thy heart 
To paint my face when I am dead, 
I pray thee draw the veil apart 

And paint the inner light instead ; 
Deem not thy touch a happy one 
To catch some transient gleam or tone, 
An aimless smile, a fleeting ray, 
Or trifles grooved in meaner clay, 
With all the finer essence gone. 

Our souls so stained and wanton weak, 
So tempered are to earthly mood, 

That half the words we tamely speak 
Are destitute of faith or good; 

Our passions are so mixed with ills, 

And burn so low, our wayward wills 
So vexed by rude and lawless lust, 
Our eyes so leaden with the dust. 

That Heaven's pure radiance rarely thrills. 

So picture not these alien signs 
To thy mute love, which craves the best; 
42 



THE PORTRAIT 43 

Efface from memory's generous lines 
The grosser taints that mar the rest, 

Lest — dwelling in the thought of these — 

Thy spirit may not find release 
To search within for that lost art 
Which writes its meaning in the heart, 

With no estranged device to please. 

If thou recallest one dear thought 
Which flashed to thee the love I bore. 

Illumine it, as once it wrought 
Its image in my life before; 

Lend it the spell that won thy grace, 

The fire that tinged thy beauteous face ; 
One regal touch that still shall wed 
Thy being to thy loved one, dead. 

And consecrate the empty place! 

For what is skill, or what indeed — 

The arts inviolate, that draw 
In flawless lines, and yet must need 

Forget the spirit in the law ? 
O, paint one longing look from me, 
Of Love's eyes, passion-strained to see; 

'T will be more worth than half the world 

Of canvas ever yet unfurled, — 
One soul-lit glance 'twixt thee and me! 



TO THE VICTOR 

QUESTION 

OTELL me by what marvel feat 
Thou 'st gained at last this sovereign seat; 
What radiance shone upon thy course; 
What trumpet-music — from what source — 
Fell on thine eager ear to thrill 
Thy tireless will ? 

tell me what strong wings were thine 
To lift thee ; by what deft design 

Thou 'st mastered mere and waste, to tread 
These glittering summits overhead; 

What mystic wand or fortune's star 

Led thee afar ? 

REPLY 

No mystic wand, no wings, — ah me! — 

No fortune's star could I foresee, 
Nor any beaconing of the way 
Transformed the darkness into day ; 

No marvel feat, nay, — all of these 

1 paid in fees. 

44 



TO THE VICTOR 45 

Yet vanward-seen, beyond me, wound 
A pathless trail that scorned the ground ; 

And as I went, before me pressed 

Undaunted feet that took no rest ; 
From the still stars a voice, unheard, 
My spirit stirred, — 

And — seeming — these, from out the deeps, — 

Led upward to the shining steeps; 
The gloom of earth, the pall of night. 
Bereft and vanquished, took their flight, 

And victory came; but naught of mine; 

Nay, naught of mine 1 



THE TREES 

WHAT is the wisdom taught of the trees ? 
Something of energy, something of ease; 
Steadfastness rooted in passionless peace. 

Life — giving verdure to upland and glen; 
Graces — compelling the praises of men; 
Freedom that bends to the eagle and v/ren. 

Largess — expanding in ripeness and size ; 
Shadow that shelters the foolish and wise; 
Patience that buffets all winds of the skies. 

Uprightness — standing for truth like a tower; 
Dignity — symbol of honor and power; 
Beauty that blooms in the ultimate flower! 



46 



THE MASTER 

*'T_JO for a song! " the master cried. 
II ''• The day is dying, sing me a song; 
Something to daunt the eventide; 

Something to speed the twilight, long. 

''Sing me a song of halcyon days, 

When life was set to happy rhymes; 
Something of love in the sylvan Mays, — 
Of memories sweet as the Minster-chimes." 

The slave crouched low at his master's feet. 
Weary of heart, with downcast eyes ; 

He heard the chime of the Minster beat 
Its solemn hymnal to the skies ; 

His weird voice stirred the slumb'rous air 
In breathings like a smothered sigh, 

As broodingly, with careless care. 
He hummed the stave of a lullaby. 

He crooned a minstrel-lay of love, — 
Of love that he had never shared; 

And into tender cadence wove 
The happiness he 'd never dared. 

47 



48 THE MASTER 

Singing, he felt the bonds he wore; 

Their legacy of toil and scourge; 
Their bitterness and chastening, sore, 

Which hushed his love song to a dirge. 

Ever the fate of a hopeless gloom ; 

Ever the weight of a pitiless arm 
To brave and bear, till the day of doom, 

But never love with its healing balm. 

When, lo, his quickening pulses thrilled 
His spirit with impassioned fire! 

Until the night — subdued and stilled — 
Seemed barkening to his living lyre. 

His words were winged; his vibrant song- 
Upborne on tides of inward flame — 

Out-heralded his sense of wrong 

And triumphed o'er the badge of shame. 

The master — listening — bowed his head; 

The night crept on in shadows grim; 
The song to silence falling, shed 

A nameless influence over him. 

And from the portal — awed — he stole; 
Pacing the night with visage grave, 
He passed this sentence on his soul: 
*' He is the master, 1, the slave!" 



ALONE 

THE rooms are silent; the strange guests. 
Who thronged but now, are gone: 
The laughters cease ; the music rests 

Its rhythmic feet ; alone 
I watch the embers die, 
And hear the night wind sigh. 

The bright glare pales; the shadows fall 
Athwart the casement squares. 

And all the shapes are wrapt in pall ; 
A gloom my faint heart shares; 

I feel the deepening shade 

Within my bosom laid. 

The silent rooms are dreary space 

Filled with a ghostly throng. 
But in the dimness is a face 

That leaves me never long, — 
A haunting face, and sweet. 
Which I no longer greet. 

The empty rooms may throng again 
With living guests, and oft 

49 



50 ALONE 

The laughters ring; the music's strain 

Break with its murmurs, soft; 
But what is voice and lute 
When one loved voice is mute ? 

They cannot know my hidden bruise 
Who their light homage pay; 

They think me rude when 1 refuse 
To sing my songs of May; 

They cannot know the deeps 

From which my song-note leaps. 

Yet 1 shall join the throng and sing 

On many a gala day; 
Shall sing my songs to soothe the sting, 

But not the songs of May : 
Then hear the night wind sigh, 
And watch the embers die! 



THE WISE WORLDLING 

COMPLETE like Grecian art; defined 
In wisdom; versed in all the schools; 
He kriows tradition — who designed 

The antiques; all the expert's rules; 
Has conned the classic age and tongue; 
Can quote all sages read and sung. 

Of form and beauty he would teach 
The acme of the artist's thought; 

So, too, in manners, breeding, speech, 
A true Adonis deftly wrought ; 

He's master of the daintiest laws 

Of etiquette; permits no flaws. 

The patterns of the world in him 
Are matched ; in elegance a kind 

Of nimbus crowns his head, though dim; 
A self-complacency of mind 

Looms up — a condescending way 

That says, " I'm not of common clay." 

The nicest platitudes are his, — 
Sir Oracle in word and pen ; 
51 



52 THE WISE WORLDLING 

In critiques on utilities, 

He knows beyond the vulgar ken; 
In style, in fashions, in the games, 
Eclipses all the lesser fames. 

Spencerian — he 's solved the doubt 
Of origin, and scorns the creeds; 

'T is evolution, out and out; 

'T is dirt must answer all our needs; 

And Nature! — why, her utmost laws 

Exist, and that's their primal cause! 

Ah, Egotist! earth's world-wise man, 
Blind as the night, dead as the moon! 

He knows too much who knows the plan 
Of the Great Infinite, so soon. 

Though to the central seas he 'd bore. 

With his dull bit, he 'd miss the core. 



IN SPIRIT 

OUR hands may never press, nor palms 
Clasp — plighting, — nor outstretching arms. 
Nor eyes one instant cross and meet 

To wed swift thoughts with winged feet. 

Our lips may never meet; in vain 

Our orphaned souls hive heartless gain, 

While we go separate on our ways 
Through the mist-veil of earthly days. 

MYSTERE 

THEY will clasp and greet from year to year, 
Neither to know of the other's fear; 
Their voices may blend, yet ever unknown. 
Each journeys apart, bereft and alone. 

They will clasp and greet, but neither will dare 
To know the other's secret despair; 

Strangers are they, though bounden by fate ; 

Betrothed, foresworn ; ay, never to mate ! 



53 



SONG OF THE SEA 

I SEAWARD gaze for the tardy rain; 
The tempest broods in the sky; 
The sea-gulls toss on the surge like a pain, 

And the heavy north winds sigh ; 
I listen and hear the billows rave 

In the caverned cliffs ashore; 
I listen to hear a voice on the wave, 
But it speaks to me no more. 

A galleon sailed to the underworld, 

One day, in a gold mist clad ; 
The chanting breeze swept the sails, unfurled, 

In musical cadences glad. 
My pulses beat with a fear unsaid, 

With a farewell over the sea; 
And now I moan with the winds for the dead,- 

For a Love that is lost to me. 

No more the rose from its scented heart 

Breaks forth in blossom again ; 
No crown of lilies mocks with its art 

The heart of love that is slain. 

54 



SONG OF THE SEA 55 

For over the sea, in calm and storm. 

In mist or the midnight gloom, 
I, gazing, wis that a lover's form 

Is wrought in the shadowy loom. 

And watching the sea through the golden haze, 

With its silver sails unfurled, 
I, fancying, dream through desolate days, 

Of the ship from the underworld. 
Yet I know — I know my Love is dead. 

Though the sea may never own 
That it laid my Love in its fathomless bed 

And left me to moan and moan 1 



O REALIST! 

THINE is an arid mind, untaught 
Of dreamy vistas stretching o'er 
Fair aisles for fancy to explore, 
Or through seductive lures of thought 
Illumined by the poet's lore. 

Barren of wistful musings thou, 
(Weird offsprings of the solitudes,) 
Of rapt delights, of darkling broods; 

Unused to passion's heightened vow, 
Or flashes from its splendid moods. 

Thou singest not of Paradise, 

Outbreathings from a soulful lyre; 
No gleams betokening heart of fire 

With visage set to visioned eyes; 
No hidden ardors of desire. 

Thou dost defy these signs of Heaven ; 
Deny the fearful throes of prayer. 
And fearful joys the soul would share, 

By which the soul is purged and shriven 

Of lowly taints and stagnant air, — 

O Realist! 



56 



BEYOND 

THE vast Beyond, — how alien it seems; 
I, dwelling here in dust and blight, 
Can only fathom it in my dreams. 

I listen; nought but the silences speak; 
I cannot know the way, the where ; 
My vision fails, and my faith is weak. 

I wander alone beneath the stars, 

And breathe the whisper of a prayer; 
But the veil is drawn beyond the bars. 

In vain 1 grope for the signal mark ; 

Here is the tomb, yonder the light; 
Forever 1 doubt 'twixt day and dark. 



57 



YONDER 

OFOR the Silences! O for the Solitudes! 
Hurrying men so noisy are! 
Hear the loud world vaunt of its folly-broods ! 
Lo the sereneness of a star! 

Baseborn shall hourly shout us their thunders; 

Brave souls hushed to whispers are; 
Earth shall eternally boast its rude wonders ; 

O for the stillness of a star ! 

Down the broad thoroughfares millions make clamor; 

Yonder — silence is divine! 
Clash in thy tumults, O nations in armor! 

Peace, be still, O spirit of mine ! 



58 



MIDSUMMER ODE TO INDOLENCE 

SWEET loiterer thou, O Indolence, 
Becalmed guest of soul and sense! 
I crown thee as my happy chance, 
Thou easer of all circumstance. 
Too lax art thou to laugh or sigh, 
Too listless with inert content 
To ask the world for what, or why. 
Or on whose mission, thou art sent. 

Unhappy questioners may haste. 
With tireless word and will, to waste 

Their prying craft on strange inquests ; 

Thou heedest not such stern behests. 
Or grim philosophies, designed 
To vex the current of the mind; 

Thou hast no heart of bitterness, 

Nor dost thou tax thee more or less 
With yea or nay; wise reasoners keep 
In sufferance just outside thy gate; 
For grievance thou might haply weep, 

Or lightly mourn at darker fate ; 
Still, still thou hast no poignancy. 
Nor passion, save in mild degree ; 

59 



6o MIDSUMMER ODE TO INDOLENCE 

Whate'er betide, thou fain would gaze 
With hermit's eyes on troubled ways, 
Or stretch thy limbs, or sleep, or eat, 
Or watch the trip of blithesome feet, 
Or sit in drowsy aisles and dream 
On summer days— entranced seem. 
And hear the lapsing brooklet sing 
To throstle on its wizard wing, 

And hear the austere note reply 
From out the dizzy dome of sky; 
Sufficed — though all the world be rife 
With wakenings of love and life, — 

To hush thy tongue, to seal thine ear. 
Or sing a song of careless cheer; 
To lounge in scented fields, to climb 
The lower hills, to roam the vale. 
Or watch the sunsets pale and pale. 
Unmoved to span the heights sublime; 
In fallow thoughts to take thine ease. 
Nor envy others their degrees, 
But just to live, and breathe, and rest, 
And deem thyself supremely blest. 

Sweet loiterer thou, O Indolence, 
Becalmed guest of soul and sense! 

I crown thee as my happy chance. 
Thou easer of all circumstance. 



UNRECONCILED 

'HP IS said that hearts are reconciled 

1 When love no more is passion-wiid, 
Or — world-wise — will not be beguiled 

To worship prone; 
'T is said, when love is buried deep, 
When its leal joy is gone to sleep 
In bitterness, or lives to weep 

And die alone, 
That then men come to find, at last, 
Consolement, since the dream is past, 
And leave love, with its joy, outcast. 

Quite reconciled. 
If this be so, I cannot tell ; 
If this be so, ah well, ah well! 
Still would I dream of love's lost spell, — 

Unreconciled. 



6i 



THE TRIUMPH OF SONG 

GO forth, frail barque, 
Upborne and seaward, to the isles of Dream ; 
Outspeed th' uneasy winds of day and dark; 
Hie onward through the golden and the gleam. 

Go forth, frail barque ; 

Thy hidden course fate leads thee on to find; 
The stars may pilot to thy shining mark ; 

Joys shall be thine that tempests may not bind. 

Go forth, frail barque; 

Wings buoy thy burden, making music, rare, 
That floats above thee, circling as a lark 

That rides the swell and ebb of ambient air. 

Go forth, frail barque, 

Celestial argosy of love and light ; 
Lo, lo, ye tardy earthling-children, hark! 

And hark, ye angels, clothed in robes of white ! 



62 



O WAR SHIP! 

FAR down the Southern, coastwise sea 
An ocean fortress, armored, glides; 
The sun's glow gilds with radiancy 
The eager waters that she rides; 
Astern the billows in her wake 
Recede, revolve, rebound, and break. 

O War Ship ! what strange power is thine ? 

What tragic sweep of grace and force ? 
What stately reach of depth and line 

To plow the waters in thy course ! 
Far on the great swells seem to feel 
The coming of thy lordly keel. 

Down, down the Southern coast she speeds, 
Nor feels the tempest on her trail; 

Her mighty form, defiant, leads 
In scorn of night, of storm or gale, 

While all about the sea-gulls shriek. 

And all about the wild horns speak. 

She waits not for the morning calm, 
As seaward, crossing reef and shoal, 
63 



64 O WAR SHIP 

Beyond the land of prune and palm, 
She passes southward to her goal; 
The dawn across her armor falls 
As she salutes Old Morro's walls. 

O War Ship, waiting for thy doom ! 

O War Ship, fouled by treacherous hand! 
To hundreds of thy braves a tomb, — 

Thy braves, the martyrs of our land! 
We send thee greeting 'neath the waves; 
We crown our martyrs in their graves I 



COULD HAND HAVE LED 

DEATH laid me low on its black bier, 
And then lie came — ^bent over me — 
Prone with a passion poignant dear; 
He pled his grief so fearfully 

That all the spirit-pulses beat 

About my heart, stained my white lips; 
Sent fever-throbs to my clod feet, 

Then back to cheek and finger-tips ! 

Could 1 have answered his wild plea, 
Could my dumb will have beckoned him, 

Could hand have led — though agony 
Of death might smite him, eyes grow dim. 

And his whole being waste and fade, 

I would have borne him through the night 

Of gloom, up from its solemn shade, 
To the vast Heaven's eternal light ! 



65 



CONTRASTED 

DREAMING — I saw a wounded soldier halt 
Along the line of a great battle-field; 
And by his side a horseman seemed to vault 
Into his saddle, armed with sword and shield. 

Comrades were they, and pledged as one to fight; 

Swift-footed came, behind, the common foe ; 
The horseman paused a moment, then took flight; 

The wounded mate gazed at his friend, when lo, 

A sudden dust arose, he saw — beyond — 
Two aliens smite the rider, and he fell, 

But rising — for the blows had only stunned — 
Fought with his might, and stood him bravely well. 

The wounded comrade hastened on; forgot 
His own distress; bore down with noble will, 

And with keen weapon smote; the foe, distraught 
Or craven, fled; one instant he stood still 

As if by grief o'erborne, then with great stress 
Upraised the false one on his steed again. 

Spoke him the gentlest words of friendliness. 
And sped the horse once more across the plain. 

66 



CONTRASTED , 6/ 

Then, bitterly, I said: "Some men are steel, 
Are true as Heaven ; and some, as worthless clay, 

Will crumble back to dust, nor once reveal 
One sign of God on all their clodden way ! " 



SONG 

THE springtide comes witii tears and laughter ; 
The summer goes apace; 
The autumn flaunts its banners after; 

The winter winds embrace. 
These come fleet- winged, and hastening go; 

Ties made that quickly sever; 
But Love, perennial here below, 
Is with the heart forever! 

The spring is but a fickle thing, 

And summer suns are fleeting; 
The autumn brings its offering ; 

And winter, icy greeting. 
So all the year 's a fugitive. 

Returning to us never! 
But Love, in matchless gifts, shall give, 

And Love goes on forever! 



63 



IN PORT 

SAIL swiftly, happy ship, 
Down to thy mother-sea; 
Pass the portal-gate and dip 

Into thy nativity ; 
Sailing to the underworld 
With thy flaunting flags unfurled ! 

Sail slowly through the calm 

In careless indolence, 
Wafted by faint airs of balm 

To the sunny islands hence; 
Linger by the southern main. 
Rover of the ocean's plain. 

Sail swiftly — tempest flailed — 
Athwart the foamy crest; 

Many a ship has been begaled 
Wandering from its harbor-rest. 

Speed thou onward; fleetly fly; 

Dash the greedy waters by! 

Sail slowly through the mist 
Into the vast unknown, 
69 



70 IN PORT 

Where white, fatal hps have kissed. 

Leaving other lips to moan. 
Signal when thou pierce the veil, 
Lest death — haply — cross thy trail. 

Sail homeward into port. 

Out of the misty dark; 
No fierce lightnings more shall sport, 

Making thee their shining mark. 
Salutations speed thee on ; 
Voyage ended, — haven won! 



NIGHT WATCHES 

THE shadows fall; the night is still; 
Deep shadows, silence, deep; 
The pine trees in the gloom scarce thrill, 

The winds are lulled to sleep; 
The night-owl, hushed and tranced, bates 
Its cry, and in the darkness waits. 

The leaden clouds hang — ^threatening — low ; 

The stars are dimmed and blurred; 
The glazed and inky waters flow, 

By never a ripple stirred ; 
The great hills hang in masses, black, 
Above the river's ancient track. 

No light — save faintest gleam — escapes 

From the inmantled skies; 
Eclipsed the world of earthly shapes, 

Eclipsed as hope that dies, 
As joy that shrinks, when Death's slow dart 
Shall — piercing — cleave life's bond apart! 



71 



FALLEN 

I HAVE missed thee from my heart 
As the wasting days have fled; 
Art thou living, art thou dead 
Since our souls have dwelt apart ? 
There are moments when I start 
Trembling with the thought of thee, 
When my orphaned love would flee 
Across the world where'er thou art; 
Yet I know it shall not be! 

How irreparable is fate! 

I forever hear it say, 

" Lost in darkness on his way "; 
And I hear the words "Too late! " 
Once thou merited to mate 

With a queen — or so I deemed; 

But, alas, I had but dreamed ; 
Now my love is desolate. 

Empty of the love that seemed. 

Thou hast forfeit made of all ; 
Faith, the fountain-life of love, 
72 



FALLEN 73 

(Love that Heaven's high passions move 
Since the primal Eden-fall), 
Holding us in its sweet thrall, 

Bondage of its own true hand, 

Loosed us of its mystic band; 
Set us free, and that is all ; 

Parted us, — we understand. 

Honor, what is it, canst tell — 

Thou, a fallen angel, so ? 

Ever deignest thou to know 
Its proud meaning since thou fell ? 
Thou didst imitate it well, 

Bearing in thy mobile face 

Counterfeit of its fair grace. 
Mask of Heaven above the Hell 

Thou hast cherished in its place. 

Silence — lips of bitterness ; 

He, so frail and lawless weak, 

Wilt not listen if thou speak ; 
Lips that once, with sacred kiss 

Answered to the love of his, 
Murmur not, — nay, lisp his name 
More in sorrow than in blame ; 

Breathe to other ears but this, 

"Once I loved him"; shield his shame! 



"NAY, DEATH" 

TWO wandered forth in the night — 
Life and its Shadow — two. 
She shuddered. Lo the Mocking Blight 

With secret arrow slew ! 
" I know thee, Fatal One," she said; 
" Ah, dost ? where 's Faith, then, dead ? " 

Two met beyond in Borderland. 

"Not one step more," she said. 
" Who art thou, woman ? Take my hand." 

"Nay, Death, I'm not afraid; 
I am immortal, — born of Light! 
Thou — thou — Eternal Night! " 



74 



WHO HAS THE CLUE? 

SLOWLY the year creeps, and the long day 
Dreamily dawns and dies in the deep. 
Militant Life goes searching the way 
That it must lead, its pound to pay, 

Its faith to hold, its woes to weep, 
Welcoming every errant ray. 

Heart-throbs, dreading; aching with sense 
Of want and hunger, craving good; 

Groping and gleaning for recompense 

That high Hope promises to dispense ; 
Good that never is understood ; 

Want and hunger and hope intense! 

Yonder a child is born to the New ; 

Yonder an old man dies in the Gray. 
All betwixt the Earth and the Blue 
Is underwrit with the pound that 's due! 

A day, a year; a year, a day; 

To end in what ? Who has the clue ? 



75 



A SONG OF THE SARANAC CAMP 

THE rare September breezes blow, 
The mellowed suns serenely glow. 
As on the northern lake we float, 
Scarce balanced in its slender boat. 

The frail shell dances on the crest; 
We row it east, we row it west; 
The music of its rhythmic oars 
Re-echoes from the balsam shores. 

The golden days glide idly by, 
And fade like cloudlets in the sky; 
Our listless moods — like dreams — repeat 
The magic of their fancies, fleet. 

We light our camp-fires 'neath the stars ; 
We feed them with the forest spars, 
And fling our wild songs to the night 
Until the very birds take flight. 

And what care we for wind or rain ? 
Or what care we for loss or gain ? 
The great hills to our spirits sing; 
The world, the world has taken wing ! 



76 



OUT OF THE DEPTHS 

" Music, when soft voices die, 
Vibrates in the memory." 

OUT of the depths of Silence ! 
Out from the home of the soul, 
Stealeth a voice that I love ; thence 

Cometh a joy to console; 
Thence a prayer of the spirit, — 
Or a hushed song; I hear it 

Out of the depths. 

Not from the stroke of the harper, 
Not from the notes of the flute. 

Not from the piper — sharper, — 
Or dulcet of the lute, 

Issueth music clearest ; 

But from the Silence, dearest, — 
Out of the depths. 

Out of the depths ! Dost wonder. 
When all the earth is waking, 

Vibrant with sound, that, under 
My breast, my heart is aching, 

As a mute voice from Memory 

Sings a soul-song to me 

Out of the depths ? 



77 



SEAWARD 

SAIL seaward, barque, and lightly lave 
Thy prow within the shallow wave; 
Sail seaward, cleave the ebbing tide 
That ripples on thy polished side ; 
Thou floatest on a mimic sea. 
Nor canst thou know thy destiny; 
This is thy childhood; in thy play 
Thou fanciest, here within the bay, 
That thou canst ride on all the seas 
Of waters with an equal ease. 

Sail seaward, ah, no seer can tell 
What fortune bides thee, fair or fell. 
Leap on, leap on, O magic barque. 
Even though thou venture in the dark, 
Have faith to brave the giant sea 
If thou wouldst snatch a victory ; 
Nay, fear it not, be strong, be free, 
The gods may bind the gales for thee! 



78 



THE GRAVE OF HELEN HUNT JACKSON (H. H.) 

(on CHEYENNE MOUNTAIN) 

ALONE! At night thd moon looks down 
Upon the mountain-gloom; 
It lays a silver robe and crown 

Over a poet's tomb. 
Covering the mound are stone on stone, 
Borne there by travellers, one by one. 

No shaft climbs skyward, marble-pale ; 

No alien throngs intrude; 
No warders guard the forest-trail 

To mar the solitude. 
Alone, beneath the beech and pine, 
She rests, who sang her songs, divine. 

The hermit-thrush its note outwells 

Within the shaded deeps ; 
The wandering breeze bemoans, and knells 

Its requiem while she sleeps; 
Save these, O Silence, claim thine own 
Where she lies in the mount, — alone! 



79 



INVIOLATE 

A SONG 

O SECRET, inveiled from all comers; 
O Secret, tl;at ever abides 
Enbosomed, through winters and summers, 
Whatever the fate that betides, 

I guard thee, I chide thee, I hide thee. 
Yet out of masked eyes dost thou gaze ; 

How sorely my lips have belied thee. 
Thee — that thine own spirit betrays. 

Love is so bereft of its pleasure. 

Forbidden its soul to reveal, 
And thou art so charged with its treasure. 

Its tenderest thought to conceal. 

That Pain — unsubmissive — transgresses ; 

Anc* Sadness — like Joy — will run o'er, 
When Love is denied its redresses; 

When Love hath no window or door! 

Will Time thy fast fetters dissever, — 
Thine — sealed by the subtilest of art ? 

O Secret, must thou be forever 
Entombed in the cell of the heart ? 



80 



DOOM DAYS 

THERE are doom-days when sadness fills 
The least, dark channel of the soul. 
As whispering in the gloaming thrills, 
Though e'er so loud the thunders roll. 

Days when the dearth of life outweighs 
All life, and makes a void of all ; 

When darkling thoughts of other days, 
Like warning echoes, call and call: 

When hopeless dreams, as strange mirage, 
Return to make more hopeless, hope ; 

And ebbing joys the hours discharge, 
As backward into night they grope ! 

When Love foregoes its lightest plea 
For want of answering love, and fain 

Would seek the shrine of memory 
To worship at its sacred fane. 

Though suns may shed their radiance 
In wealth of gold, when such days are; 

And Earth, bedecked — by happy chance, — 
May blossom as in Zanzibar, 

6 

8i 



DOOM DA YS 

'T is midnight still to souls distraught, 
Save this, — that every thought's awake; 

And every thought an anguished thought 
That prays as if the heart v^^ould break! 

Then, then, O master-Will, command! 

Blind eyes, see thou with second sight: 
Weak hand, grasp thou a stronger hand ; 

And Heart, go out into the light! 



BIRDS OF SLEEPY-HOLLOW 

I WATCH the downward flowing stream, 
Far, far within this emerald wood; 
It wooes me to its lonely mood; 
It charms my spirit with its dream. 

I stroll along its shadowy banks, 

O sweet enchanter, Solitude ! 

Dull world, with all thine alien brood, 
Away, for thee I give no thanks. 

Stern prophets of the brain that guess 
In riddles, now I want ye not; 
Too much the mind is overwrought 

With answerings of no and yes. 

One little day, one peerless space 
Of time shall fill me to the brim 
With joy that has a golden rim. 

Nor craves a thought I dare not trace. 

The nymphs, whose refuge is the shade; 
The wing'd sprites of the forests green 
83 



84 BIRDS OF SLEEPY-HOLLOW 

That skim the air, that sing unseen, 
Are blessed; in them no hopes shall fade, 

Nor prone hearts sadden for their lost; 
Their fairy breasts may never grieve 
For passioned loves beyond retrieve, 

Nor perish by untimely frost; 

They rest in nature's infinite, 

Nor search to fathom blind decrees; 
Enough, they own a realm of trees, 

A world of sky, a heaven of light. 

Their eyes are gleams of night and day, 
Their plumes are tinged with fire and fern, 
Their songs are raptures that they learn 

From angels on their chartless way. 

The baffled art of man may strain 
To wrest the secret mysteries 
From vaulted skies, from earth and seas; 

What matter for the loss or gain ? 

They question not, yet blissful are 
In ignorance ; though knowledge fails, 
They, fearless, mount the shining trails, 

And face the radiance of a star ! 

I, too, would scent the spicy breeze 
Within this elfin-land, would hear 



BIRDS OF SLEEPY-HOLLOW 85 

Soft silences that miss the ear, 
And dwell and sing as one of these; 

Find wings that worldlings may not clip, 
And heights that challenge meaner gain; 
Forget the low and level plain 

In lavish nature's fellowship. 

O world, if thou thy gifts would give 
In wealth that laughs at reel or scale 
(Whatever schemes may win or fail), 

Give these to me, and let me live ! 



A PICTURE 

THE TWILIGHT-LAND 

BEYOND the river, on Nyack's strand, 
When night draws near, is the twilight-land; 
Bathed in a flood of crimson and gold. 
It lies in a mantle manifold. 

The throbbing waves have melted the sky 
And steeped the waters in amber dye; 

Only the mountain's shadow o'erpalls 

The sheen, as into the sea it falls. 

On marge and hill the torches are lit. 
Dim gleams that under the water flit; 

While into the mirror, near and far, 

Fall faint fire-tips of star on star. 

The sails float over the fields of sleep 

Like spectres winging the airy deep. 
And gliding across the glistening floor 
They dip in the dusky depths once more. 

A dreamy hush pervades the spell, 
Save muffled beat of the sunset-bell! 



86 



THE AMERICAN SOLDIER BOY 

HE leaves his home of love and prayer; 
Its fields and workshop; sweetheart, mother; 
He leaves that he may do and dare; 
And oh the grief to bear and smother! 

Where suns are bright and skies are blue 
He 's tanned his skin a wholesome tawny; 

His eye is keen, his spirit too; 
His form is lithesome, taut, and brawny. 

He wears no paltry lace of gold 
To make the staring people praise him, 

Nor brazen medals, manifold, 

Pretentious, dons, forsooth to grace him. 

He '11 sing or march, or shoot and drill. 
Or camp and sleep and take his chance, sirs; 

He knows that war is meant to kill. 
And battles as he 'd lead the lancers. 

He holds his faith and courage strong; 

His constancy deserts him never; 
He bears with patience, waiting long; 

And fights — aye, fights, if needs, forever. 

87 



88 THE AMERICAN SOLDIER BOY 

O foe, beware the sword he wields, 
For while his heart is true and tender, 

His steel 's as true; he never yields 
When Honor calls him to defend her. 



ESTRANGED 

A SONG 

BROODING alone o'er remembered meetings, 
Bereft of thee and my heart; 
Thinking sore thoughts of the springtide greetings, 
Ere yet we wandered apart, 

I stroll through the wood where erst we, dreaming. 

Lisped Edens each unto each; 
The shadows — how dusk in the autumn gleaming! 

The stillness — how thirsty for speech ! 

The fugitive brook — could it breathe thy spirit, 

Or breezes bear it to me ; 
Or echo of thine — might 1 but hear it, 

I 'd crave a vision of thee ! 

But vague winds sing sad orisons only ; 

The waters tauntingly play; 
And I, unappeased, lament here, lonely, 

A heart as alien as they. 



89 



UNVEILED 

OF what is man made, tell me: of the dust; 
Of tissue, adipose with fibres strung; 
Of veins inlacing; of eye, ear, and tongue; 
Of luring, lawless appetite and lust; 

Of hands that grasp, of feet that plod and dance, 
Of brain to thwart the reckless dice of chance ? 

For what is man made, tell me: is 't to win 

The prizes, empty; wear the purple robe; 

Command, like Caesar, conquering the globe ? 
To fight for laurels in the endless din. 

Or feel the galling fetters; laugh or sigh; 

To heap up treasures, or to slave and die ? 

Have life and death no signet, save to swell 
The everlasting cortege to the tomb ? 
Have truth and love but one unchanging doom. 

Earth-born, and subject to its fateful spell ? 
If this be so, then hence all aimless strife, — 
All noble emulation. What is life ? 

What is it to be free, to will and wait, 
To long and love, and win by sacrifice ? 
90 



UNVEILED 91 

To fall, repent, and gather strength to rise ? 
To credit faith, and trust that soon or late, 
Beyond the human-tide, above the clod, 
There live, eternal, truth and love in God ? 

Some order, yet concealed, of science wrought 
Within the spirit realm, unveiled, will show 
A world that, part divined, we do not know, 

A sphere upreared upon sublimer thought. 
Soul-lit, and consecrate to boundless good, 
Wherein all life will then be understood. 



ON THE SUMMIT! 

HIGH, so high, without alloy; 
So intoxicating, rare ; 
Nay, I cannot breathe this air 
On the summit of my joy ! 

'T is too strong for me. 

Only moments can I stay 

Where my soul would dwell apart; 

To the valley, O my heart! 
From these heights let us away, 
Till eternity ! 



92 



WRITTEN IN AN ALBUM 

THANKS for sunshine, did you say ? 
For the purple ides of May, 
For the luxury of living 
In such days without misgiving, 
For the perfect innocence 
Of a love without suspense, 
For a sky without its rain, 
For a joy without its pain. 
For a face of waxen beauty 
Never crossed by frown of duty. 
For the wings to soar above 
Without feet and hands of love. 
For a fairy dream that finds 
Heaven without earth's countersigns ? 

Nay, ah better, I would say. 

Wed night's dark to beauteous day; 

Never fortune without loss, 

Or crown unchallenged by a cross ; 

Love, too light, has many friends; 

Little gives, it only lends ; 

93 



94 WRITTEN IN AN ALBUM 

Heart will never find its mate 
Loyal, uninured to wait; 
Roses lavish sweetest breath 
Through the subtle airs of death ; 
Chastened are the souls that rise 
From the vale of sacrifice; 
Won, ah thrice, the victory, meet, 
Through the portal of defeat. 

Thanks, sweet friend, thou givest truest, 
For the years thou daily ruest ; 
Bitterness is Heaven's disguise; 
Darkness comes, then Paradise! 



MIGHT-HAVE-BEEN 

HAD thine eyes with venturous glance 
Told thine own wild tumult when 
Tremulous words revealed mine, then ; - 
Had thy blood by some quick chance 
Bounded, burning in thy gaze. 
Startling with a sweet amaze ; 

Had thy hidden bosom beat, 
Throbbing as the sea throbs there, 
Passion-laden, mine to share, 

When love cast me at thy feet, 
Then — ah then would 1 have known 
To have claimed thee for my own ! 



95 



DEMENCE 

HE who burned with a soul's desire, 
Brave with truth, with faith of fire. 
Suddenly lost from his being, bright. 

Thought, that wrought in his ardent brain; 
Love and light, — when terrible night 
Came like death, or a prison-chain 1 

Joy went out like a smothered flame; 

Blackness quenched his golden day 
Leaving only image and name — 

All else gone on an unknown way. 

After the silent years have fled, 
Lo he returns again from the dead! 

QUESTION 

Where hast thou been, O truant Mind, 
Lost from thy happy eminence 

Wandering afar ? What mystic signed 
Thee to follow in blind suspense 
96 



DEMENCE 97 

Down to the underworld of Time ? 

Wast lost in some benighted vale, 

Languishing in shadows, pale, 
Poisoned in mists of a deadly clime ? 

REPLY 

Caves and hollows of earth were mine; 
Dreams of Heaven, its heights divine ; 
Lowest of low and highest of high, 

Now in Hades, now in the isle 
Of bliss Elysium under the sky. 

Or cast in donjons of exile! 

Where have I been ? O ask not me ! 

Plunged in woes of Hell's abyss; 

Outlaw, ranging a precipice. 
Striding waves of a troubled sea! 
Where have I been ? O ask not me ! 
Famished of hunger and thirst for thee! 



THE TIDES 

TIS morning, and the tides flow in. 
I hear, above the wide world's din, 
The throb their flooding waters make; 
I hear the wild waves bound and break. 
The tides flow in. 

'T is midday, and the tides ebb low, 

As glaring in the tropic glow, 
The bare and barren sand-bar lies 
Beneath the bending, brazen skies. 
The tides ebb low. 

O Love, that floods the heart; that makes 
The swell of song, the throbs and aches, 
The grief and glory of the whole. 
With thy great passion in the soul; 
That bursts and breaks, 

Like any flood, across the leas. 

Dost thou, too, ebb and ebb like these 

Lost waves that bleach the scorching sands, 
To leave life empty in our hands ? 
Art thou like these ? 



98 



AVANT ET APRfiS 

• A SONG 

IDLING, at dawn, on the sands of the shore. 
Crooning the creed of the lover's lore, 
My heart went winging its way to the rills 
And daffodils. 

Sailing afar on a troubled sea. 
At noontide thinking, thinking of thee, 
My heart, o'erborne by its vision of years, 
Trembled with fears. 

Brooding of thee in the twilight deep. 
Wandering distrait by the wooded steep. 
My heart, importunate, longing, alone, 
Pleads for thine own. 



L.of C. 



99 



OH! THE SUBTILE KNOWING 

O COULD we know that life would last for aye, 
That life were ours forever and a day. 
Then would we love through life's eternal May ? 

If earth and Heaven were pledged and all were fair, 

Immortal Love to have an endless share. 

No change — immutable, — how would Love fare ? 

But since we can but guess, the hope — the gleam — 

May fade; the little rift, the fitful beam 

Of light that gilds, as Heaven, be but a dream. 

The tolling of the hours, the days, the years; 
The tragedies, the piteous twinge, the tears. 
The dear solicitudes, — all stir our fears. 

The glimmering faith, the doubt, the heart-refrain ; 
The bliss, the happy bondage, then the bane; 
The eager joy, alas, the grievous pain ! 

These — then we part; and oh! the subtile knowing, 
That soon shall ebb the tide that erst was flowing, 
That somewhere lurks the shadow of our going. 



OH! THE SUBTILE KNOWING lOI 

Gives sadness to Love's passionate complaining, 
A nameless pang to Love's leal bond, unfeigning, 
Beyond dominion of the heart's constraining. 

If we could know that Love were ours forever. 

No wrench of ties, a union severed never. 

Would Love live, think you, pure, unfailing ever ? 



FATE — DESTINY 

I AM Mortality; death is my doom; 
Matter in transit, a clod for the tomb ; 
A soldier of fate, for spoil or for fame, 
For love or for hate, for honor or shame. 
I am Mortality, born of her womb ! 

I am immortal; a prisoner set free; 
Destiny, careless of earth's elegy ; 

Soul winged of spirit, a star in the night; 

With Heaven to inherit, with God in the fight. 
I am immortal, this my degree! 



102 



DEAD, DEAD! 

THEN fell a silence hushed as sleep, 
Save that the midnight stroke was heard 
From yonder church-tower; not a word 
Was spoken ; gazing through the dark 
I saw a star shoot — as a lark 
Might take its flight — through the heaven's deep. 

Grieving, with eyes that could not weep, 
For one whose life but now had fled, 
A mother bent beside a bed ; 
A sister, tear-blind, whispered, "Dead!" 
And I, O God ! with broken heart. 
Crept off, and wrung my hands, apart, 
A lover; Death's distempered dart 

Had smitten low ; and in its keep 

Death barred my own. O nothingness! 

Prone, prone for aye, she lay at last, 

A shadow of her brief life, past ; 

Blank all the world; blank as the night ! 

For me, no more the sun's great light; 
For me, no more her dear caress! 
103 



I04 DEAD, DEAD! 

The kingdoms of the world were less 
Than that fair form of lifeless mould 
That even now was marble cold. 
O Love! O Love! but fold on fold 
The veil of darkness, drawn between, 
Which hides the seen from the unseen, 
Which eyes pierce not, howe'er so keen, 

Had wrapt My Own in nothingness. 

Then fell a silence hushed as sleep. 

Save that the morning stroke was heard 
From yonder church-tower; and one word. 
Which knelled the midnight of my soul, — 
A wild despair, a toll on toll. 

An echo through the hopeless deep, — 

"Dead, Dead!" 



THE HOUSE OF LIFE 

LO, reaching upward to the light, 
The House of Life, the House of Death I 
Ye cannot know to what dim height, 

Till, suddenly, with one's frail breath 
It vanishes to dust and blight. 

Its walls shall rise through toil and tears, 
And day by day make treacherous gain; 

Blithe joys shall well, consort with fears. 
As Time shall watch, in half disdain. 

To mark the way his craftsman rears. 

Wrought in its forms are beauteous lines, 
Yet interwrought are blemished stones; 

Here are the marks of fair designs. 
And here of base, forbidding ones ; 

While on its summit sunlight shines. 

Uncertain shadows fleck its face, 

Though kindly warmth may greet at heart; 
Each day may deign to give it grace. 

Each night may mar its frailer art, 
As light and darkness interlace. 
105 



I06 THE HOUSE OF LIFE 

Fret not, O Life, nor rue thy cell 
That crumbles with the crumbling mould, 

Wherein but Liliputians dwell 
As dwelt primeval man of old ; 

For soon, ah soon, Time breaks the spell! 



AUTUMN SONG OF THE WOOD AND GRASSES 

MURMURS of the sodden grasses, 
Whispering to the sloping wood: 
"Give us of thy gorgeous masses. 

Make for us a scarlet hood ; 
Make for us thy many-tinted 
Upland blushes, never hinted 
In our valley solitude. 

"We are meek and marshy nestlings 

Lying at the feet of thee. 
Thou dost harp the song the West sings, 

And it sets thy passion free. 
Glory from thy summit blazes, 
Lighting through the Indian hazes 

Down to our captivity. 

"Ah, that we could mount the slopings. 

Feel the throbbing of the hills ; 
Flee these dim and shadowy gropings 

Where the nightly mist distils 1 
Lift us, O thou lordly forest ! 
Where thy need of strength is sorest, 

Where the echoing storm-horn thrills ! " 
107 • 



I08 AUTUMN SONG OF THE WOOD AND GRASSES 

Murmurs from the maples, dying, 
Mournfully sweep down the vale; 

From the lofty lindens crying : 
" Hearest not our saddened wail ? 

All the blood has left our branches, 

Life within us ebbs and blanches 
As we shiver in the gale. 

" Take us to your sheltering meadows 
Where your fragrant beauty lies ; 

Hide us in your bosky shadows 
From the bitterness of skies ; 

From the fatal north wind wrecking 

Limb and mast, and rudely decking 
Our green wreaths with hectic dyes." 

But the marshes will not listen 

To the importuning height, 
For the frosty dews now glisten 

O'er the spectral, grassy blight; 
Death has done its dreaded reaping — 
Glen and forest, hushed, are sleeping 

In the grim autumnal night. 



FRAGMENTS 

MUSIC is strongest vexed in the strain ; 
Music is deepest drawn from the stress 
Of a turbulent soul and a poignant pain ; 
Music is truest groping to guess 
Whatever the intricate passions repress. 

Regrets are broodings over seasons gone, 
Born in the shadow of the gathering night; 

The disillusions, after dazzling suns have shone 
Through lavish morns, far on the perilous height, 
Seen now from darkened vales, through years of 
blight. 

The spirit's music is the mystic song that sweeps 

Across the harp from out the deeps ; 

The soul's rapt prayer from mute, unfashioned lips — 

a breath 
That challenges and conquers death ! 



109 



BEYOND THE NIGHT 

HE who lies here scarce a score 
Of years had trod this nether shore; 
Heart he had of faith and flame, 
Starward drawing; to him came 
One of light, an angel, white, 
Beckoning hence, beyond the night? 

Now his spirit on its way, 
Touched by God's celestial ray. 

Knows such fund of wisdom, old, 

As no mortal e'er was told ! 

Far beyond the ken of man, 
More than link or lens can span — 
He who — while of earth unwise, 
Sees now with anointed eyes! 

None has known, no ear has heard 
Here, what now, by spirit-word, 

Is imparted to his soul 

Out of God's eternal whole ! 



I COULD NOT KNOW 

A SONG 

WE met beside the rippling stream 
That vexed the byways, lonely ; 
She — Nature's beauty — like a dream, 
And I — a stripling only. 

We met and plucked the wind May-flowers, 
Like careless children straying, 

Nor minded that the springtide showers 
About our steps were playing. 

We gazed into the fleecy sky; 

We thrilled the woods with singing; 
We watched the early nestlings fly, 

And wished ourselves were winging. 

We drew together, whispering low. 

And told our love in laughter; 
I could not know — I could not know 
That I should rue it after. 

Our hearts were light as April air, 
Our thoughts were quite as fairy. 



112 / COULD NOT KNOW 

As with wild gusto, debonair, 
We spun our vows to marry. 

We wandered wild those happy days, 
Romanced of future living, 

As hand in hand with sweet delays 
We kissed without misgiving. 

The hours went by, the weeks alas! 
And tears came with leave-saying. 

she was my own bonny lass, 
For we had plighted Maying! 

1 met her when a riper grace 

Had molded form and feeling, 
Had made a marvel of her face. 
Its wondrous eyes revealing. 

But was it she? I looked again; 

I felt my pulses leaping, 
And, half between a joy and pain, 

A numbness o'er me creeping, 

For as I gazed I heard her name, 

Heard lips their kisses paying; — 
Ah, all in vain — I owned in shame, — 
In vain we plighted Maying ! 



OLD ROSES 

HERE are the roses bordering the wall; 
Constant, though blanched — as if famished and 
faint; 
Planted, I ween, by Patience and Paul 
When once a plebeian cottage, and quaint, 
Reared by some sombre Puritan saint, 
Stood on the barren mall. 

Near a blind trail in the garden-close, 
Patience and Paul rough-fashioned a bed 

By the lichened wall, where they planted a rose 
And scattered some seeds of poppies, red, 
Patience and Paul are a hundred years dead. 

But the rose — immemorial — blows. 



"3 



RAPPELER 

A SONG 

NO signet you '11 wear on your finger? 
No word you '11 pledge from your lips ? 
Have I long in durance to linger, 
Kissing your finger-tips ? 

Must I languish, lonely with waiting ? 

Heart ache — inured to its pain ? 
Through seasons — disowned and unmating — 

Bear scorn and disdain ? 

You may bid me hope and remember, 

Or bid me go and forget, 
Till the flame shall die in the ember, 

Vain love in regret. 

You may bid me go, but remember, 

Heart, 1 '11 never forget; 

Though the flame may die in the ember — 

1 '11 remember yet! 



114 



IN BONDS 

IMPORTUNING liberty, 

1 Chainless, I would fain be free; 

Fain, and yet, though fetterless. 

Feel 1 earthly gall and stress. 

Searching, I can find no peace; 

Gain from trammels no surcease. 
Earth its bound doth fix, and fate 
Masters me, and bids me wait. 

Toiling, yet I toil in vain ; 

Loss o'ertops the plume of gain, 
Meets me — victor — face to face, 
Folds me in its hard embrace. 

Seemingly, despair and woe 
Lead me to their dungeon, low ; 

" What can serve ?" and prone I pray. 

Darkness lies across my way ; 

Darkness, when the soul craves light, 
Frowns and blackens into night. 

Prisoner — born to liberty ; 

Chainless — still I am not free I 



"5 



THE CITY UNDERTOWN 

DOWN, down, down beneath the tides 
Lies the city Undertown. 
Over crest and billow glides 

Many a barque, and threatening, frown 
Sullen clouds from out the skies, 
Casting sombre shadows down 
On the city Undertown. 

Night illumes with starry gleam 

Her dim aisles, where mermaids, pale, 
Lave and frolic as in dream, 

In the ripples of her veil. 
Moonbeams, stealing unaware, 

With a silver nimbus crown 

The weird city Undertown. 

Sunken in the caverned deep, 

All oblivious of her charm. 
Lies the city lapped in sleep. 

Couched within the watery calm. 
Pinnacle and tower and spire, 

Glistening many a fathom down, 

Deck the city Undertown. 

Ii6 



THE CITY UNDER TOWN II7 

Spectres walk her shining streets; 

Flickering torches light her caves; 
Phantom horses, gaunt and fleet, 

Noiseless, tread her shimmering paves; 
Jewelled chariots mutely speed 

O'er transparent highways — down 

In the heart of Undertown. 

Blustering gale and tempest break 

On the waters far above; 
Swelling seas upheave and shake, 

Yet the city does not move; 
These shall never vex her rest — 

Many, many fathoms down, — 

Vex the city Undertown. 

When the day looms out of night, 

Lo, the city's marvels lie 
Hidden in the golden light. 

Like the stars of heaven on high. 
All the magic of it then 

Vanishes from crypt to crown. 

Ha — a ghost is Undertown! 



THE BUGLE-TRUMPETS 

OAND can ye tell us what the bugle-trumpets 
scream 
When they cry " To war, to war! " away on Afric's 
coast ? 
Dream ye e'er so wisely, can ye prophets ever dream 
What English glory means in its armed and serried 
host? 

Rifle-shot and cannon-shot hush the heart from 
beating. 
Down through flashing aisles of fire the ranks are 
told to tread ! 
Now goes forward victory, and now defeat retreating; 
But victory and defeat reap their holocaust of dead ! 

Lo, the sun goes shining on the evil and the good; 
Lo, the crimes of man and devil swarm beneath its 
fire; 
Yet are men in darkness while the shedding of their 
blood 
Makes the good to seem, belike, the devil's own 
desire. 

ii8 



THE BUGLE-TRUMPETS II9 

Ye are sires of freedom ; canst tell us of the coming ? 
All we know is blood of human staining crest and 
plain ; 

Heaps and heaps of carnage, and oh the dreadful sum- 
ming, 

The waste, the wail, the weeping! Ay, tell us of the 
gain. 



PROPHETIC 

YONDER a banner fearless borne! 
Insignia of the Alpha morn. 
O'er its white shield is writ the name 
Of one who bore the cross of shame. 
No rich escutcheon mars its fold, 
Nor sceptred eagles, — crown of gold, — 
Nor any Delphic sign or lyre 
To fire the jaded soul's desire. 
About it throng no warders, brave, 
The honor of its lead to save ; 
Behind it march no surpliced choir, 
Nor outworn flamen, priest, or prior. 
It champions no creed nor law 
To hold its devotees in awe; 
No wrangling sects, with pro and con, 
Drone paternosters, following on ; 
Nor any Pharisaic fools 
Who 'd burn the race to save their schools; 
Nay, none of these may march and fight 
Beneath this banner's hallowed light. 
Above the low, ill-favored fate 
Of screeds proclaimed in brooding hate; 



PROPHETIC 121 

Beyond the shadows, sick and pale, 
Which haunt the way-worn in the vale; 
Beyond the mists of paltry things 
That cling like clods to feet and wings, — 
This banner of the morning star 
Leads on wherever mortals are! 



APART 

'T^ IS a story that is graven 

1 On the parchment of a heart; 
Of a love that 's missed its haven; 
Of two lives that live apart; 
Of a love that lives unsated in the world's un- 
worldly mart. 

We twain bound, — the Fate 's to sever; 

Bound as one by love's leal plight; 
Happy troth foredoomed ; forever 

Destined to a hapless night; 

Banished into outer darkness like the quench- 
ing of a light. 

O imperious faith that proved her 
Queen of truth, and deified! 

How she loved me, how I loved her! 
Hearts with arms that, clinging, vied, 
Till our lips, in utter hunger kissed, — were 
never satisfied. 

Beauty, to my votive vision, 
Wrought a magic in her face. 



APART 123 

What a marvellous intuition 

Was her sweet, unsullied grace ! 
All my being bowed in homage when I felt her 
dear embrace. 



Then we could not harbor other 

Than a whole life's happy day ; 
Never dreamt of change, or whether 

Time would steal our bliss away ; 

Tranced, we were linked together in the pur- 
ple ides of May. 

But alas ! Love's exiled token, 

Smitten of a wayward will, — 
Of a treacherous pride, and broken, — 

Love, the victim, panting still; 

How the suppliant soul, aggrieving, moans 
where Love would throb and thrill ; — 

Echoing from out the ruin 

Of the Castle of Despair! 
Love no more to will or do, in 

The world; nor dream, nor dare; 

Spectral eyes, too, through the shadows, deso- 
late and tearless there. 



124 APART 

And a voice from far years sending 

Messages, so futile now, 
Of a love whose hopeless rending 

Can no more the life endow; 

Haunting voice that, voiceless, ever challenges 
the blighted vow. 



WINTER IN SLEEPY HOLLOW WOODS 

NO imprint marks the fallen snow 
As through the solitudes I walk; 
The sunlight sheds its setting glow 

On yonder hill, as fain to mock 
The glimmering twilight here below. 

The trees stretch, over hushed defiles, 
Their bare arms, and, within the shade. 

Weave traceries across the miles 
Of hermit wood and hollow glade 

That pencil all the stilly aisles. 

The nymphs have left their lonely haunt, 
And arctic frosts now seal each nook; 

Nor does the song of mavis daunt 
The icy challenge of the brook. 

That clamors with a muffled taunt. 

The shy hare peeps from covert bed, 

Half-hidden in its furred nest ; 
The light dart of the squirrel's tread 

Scarce dints the white drift's stainless breast; 
The tropic voices all are dead. 
125 



126 WINTER IN SLEEPY HOLLOW WOODS 

From out the silence breaks the chat 
And flutter of the winter wren; 

The sparrows gossip this and that; 
The partridge drums from up the glen. 

And, treed above, what 's woodpeck at ? 

Against the purple depths of sky, 
The button-balls, a thousand spheres. 

Cling to their tenuous stems on high, 
From skeletons that scorn the years, 

And wake an ancient lullaby. 

The tulip-tree flings amber shells 
Aloft to catch the starry fleece 
(Fair-shapen as the lily-bells. 

They rustle in the wintry breeze,) 
And why? Ah, Nature never tells! 

The last year's golden-rod sways yet, 
A spectre in the ghostlier snow ; 

The sumach casts its silhouette 
Against the western afterglow 

Whereof the shadows still are set. 

The winds sweep o'er the forest lane 

In moaning tones or shivering blasts. 
Now murmuring a sad refrain, 



WINTER IN SLEEPY HOLLOW WOODS 12/ 

Now charging through the empty masts, 
Now lulled to silence once again. 

Dumb winter! nay, thy voices speak 

Prophetic of the days to be. 
I see, in fen and cloister bleak, 

The yet unbloomed felicity 
Of happy Mays, now veiled and meek. 



LOVE and Life came, passing by. 
Love came first, a dream of bliss; 
Then swift Life came, hurrying nigh ; 
Touched Love's lips with bitterness; 
Seared them with its fevered iciss. 

Love and Death came, passing by. 

Love came first with saddened eyes; 
Then pale Death drew, shadowy, nigh; 

Charged Love with its mortal sighs; 

Pressed from it heart-riven cries. 

Life and Death! Lo where are they ? 
Love alone doth live and wait. 

These, of earth, shall pass away. 
Faith-winged for its deathless fate. 
Love shall join its spirit-mate ! 



128 



A HYMN OF PEACE 

OGOD ! we are of yesterday, 
A nation of the latter time; 
Thy wisdom leads us on the way — 

The highway to a purer clime; 
Teach us, O God! to trust in Thee, 
Thou Sovereign over land and sea. 

Let monarchs build their armored fleets, 
And glory in the awful game 

That Egypt played, and Europe greets 
As umpire of her tarnished fame ; 

But teach us, God, to trust in Thee — 

To trust in Thee on land and sea. 

Thou dost not reckon us to blame 
For sins of others; Thou dost rate 

Us, chiefly, guardian, in Thy name, 
Of Freedom on our own estate. 

Hold thou our passions, God; decree 

To us Thy peace on land and sea. 

Let despots arbitrate in blood ; 
The sword shall but beget the sword ; 

9 

129 



I30 A HYMN OF PEACE 

Ours is a realm where Brotherhood 

Must will for Peace, Thy Conquering Word; 
Ours is the law to trust in Thee 
For Freedom over land and sea. 

Divest us of the pride of Might, 
The boast of Power, the Roman's boast; 

Enlighten with Thy Living Light; 
Be Thou the Leader of our host, 

Until, at last, our trust in Thee 

Shall win the world to Liberty! 



L' 



ON THE WING 

OW murmur the wild waters 
In the wood, in the valleys, 
To tell of their gladness in the bloom of the year; 
To sing to the birdling^ 
As it hither, thither, sallies 
With delight ; so I know the happy days are near. 

O songster of the winter! 
In the waste of thy forest, 
What might thy songs have been o'er Arctic fields of 
snow? 

There thy longing spirit 

Must have breathed its saddest, sorest. 
Ay, loneliest of notes, to utter all thy woe! 

Yet 't is not in thee, songster. 
To brood beneath the shadow, 
As broods the soul of man; thy spirit hath no gloom; 
Bhssful, thou, in sunshine, 
Sailing o'er the summer-meadow, 
And blissful art thou 'midst the winter's dreary doom. 

131 



132 ON THE WING 

Light as the dream of poet, 

Thou, winged and merry-hearted, 
So full of joyance ! say, couldst ever thou be sad ? 
Nay, thou didst sing blithely. 
Even when thy bosom started 
At tempest-whirls of storm that fain would make thee 
mad. 

For, sweeping on thy pinions. 
Thou hearest all sounds lending 
Their mingled murmurs to the music of thy heart; 
Gazing through the ether, 

Then thou feelest all things blending 
In rapture as divine and heavenly as thou art! 



COME, DEFT FANCY 

FROM the maze of sleep and song, 
From the spell of fair romance, 
Where the dismal plagues of wrong 

Never dim thy quivering glance, 
Come, deft Fancy, swift of wing, 

Bird of thought and sprite of heart. 
Soar to treasured realms and bring 
Trophies of thy wizard art. 

Image to the dullard's eyes 

Phantoms of the storied past; 
Heave his heavy breast with sighs 

For a love that could not last. 
Flash along thy thread of thought, 

Conjured from some magic loom, 
Spirit-visions inly wrought; 

Voices from the voiceless tomb. 

Earth and stars to thee are one ; 

Space is but a moment's flight; 
Thou dost scale the setting sun ; 

Mount the silvery beams of night, — 
133 



134 COME, DEFT FANCY 

Traverse them at single span ; 

Hauntest deeps and mountain crest; 
Laugh at clumsy-footed man, 

For thou never takest rest. 

Lightly, Fancy, soothe the brain ; 

Ease it with a touch of thine; 
Loose the tension of its strain 

With thy ministry benign. 
Teach the world that, at a bound. 

Thou and thought are everywhere; 
Masters over sight and sound ; 

Meteors free as light and air. 

Pierce o'erladen hearts and bring 

Radiant dreams to dreary sense; 
From ethereal worlds O wing 

Life a fairer recompense! 
Something never won or lost; 

Fortune without toil or bane; 
Peerless beauty without cost; 

Love without its consort — Pain. 

Come, deft Fancy, with thine art 
Gild the dusky vale of earth ; 

Lighten thou the human heart 
With the solace of thy mirth ! 



ONLY DUST TO DUST 

AY, our woven lives must part. 
Long I 've known it would be so. 
Joy so dear will find its woe; 
Love so full its wounded heart. 
Thou wilt stay, but I depart 

Hence, far hence from friend and foe ; 
Where the spirits are, I go; 
Thus our woven lives must part. 

Thou wilt mourn for our lost days 
From the dawn to set of sun ; 
And thy tireless thought will run 

On and on through pathless ways; 

Skyward thou wilt gaze and gaze, 
Musing with thyself as one 
From the shadowy realms outspun, 

Doomed to mourn for our lost days. 

I shall list to hear thee pray; 
Haply hear a song from thee. 
Dwelling by thy land-locked sea. 

Shall I know thee, who can say ? 

135 



136 ONLY DUST TO DUST 

Quickly, like a sudden thought, 
I, a spirit, winged, may fly 
Outward, onward through the sky; 

Hear thee saying, overwrought: 

" All his love is turned to naught " ; 
Hear thy troubled bosom sigh: 
" All is lost since he must die. 

Leaving memory distraught." 

1 shall answer from the skies: 
" All his love is turned to fire, 
Burning purer, deeper, higher. 

Far, than thine ; thy laden sighs, 

For thy murmurs, cannot rise ; 
Lo, how foolish thy desire 
Clings to earth to faint and tire! " 

Thou wilt hear me from the skies. 

Vex thee not of "dust to dust." 
Nothingness ? nay, do not read 
Life in such a barren creed. 

Life is neither dust nor lust. 

"Dust to dust," not soul to dust; 
Frailest thought and lightest deed. 
Heavenly-born, shall God ward lead; 

Only earth is " dust to dust." 



" MINE " 

UP through the uttermost reaches 
My longings go, silent or singing; 
My heart in its haste beseeches 

For that which was mine from beginning. 
I know, as defiant I wait, 
That sometime, early or late, 
I shall have what the Angels are bringing! 

Beyond is a radiant vision, 
Above the golden-fringed ether, 

Dispelling doubt and derision ; 
Yet not e'en the singing, nay, neither 

The vision, shall change the delays. 

For the gods have immutable ways, 
Unmindful of time and its tether. 

" O laggard years ! " I go saying ; 

"O ecstasy lost in despairing! " 
What means it — all of my praying, — 

Since time and the gods are uncaring ? 
" Be it love, be it life or death ! " 
I cry in a murmur of breath 

To the years, unheeding, unsparing. 
137 



138 ''MINE" 

Though time may quicken or tarry, 
Unchallenged, with wanton disdaining; 

And hope, inconstant, miscarry; 
And I, with grievous restraining, 

Go bitterly forth in my haste. 

Yet nothing shall perish with waste. 
Nor aught be gained with complaining. 

To patience, at last, I am wedded; 

To patience, — nor chide in my singing. 
Go, Time, with feet that are leaded; 

Go, Time, with feet that are winging, 
Or slowly or swift; not for me 
The weal or the woe born of thee. 

Since mine is ordained from beginning! 



PEACE 

PEACE on the lily dawns, and Peace 
On the rose; on the limpid brooks 
That, endless, purl in naiad nooks; 

On languishings of summer seas. 

Peace on these all; on the shy ways 

Nature sets in her perfect days. 
On the wood-songsters, nesting high. 
Dawns Peace, from nearness to the sky. 

The meadow cowslips lean and listen, 
Rooted in mould, as if to hear 

The skyey signs, or flash the glisten 
Of morning suns above the mere: 

Winds, like the piping of ancient Pan, 
Like the faint lute of some sea-maid, 
Alternate breathe through aisle and glade. 
While golden cloudlets form and fade. 

Unnoted by the thought of man. 

Peace, then, to these! Peace shall be thine, 
O Nature, through thine earth-bound years, 

For thou art ancient. God's design 
Brings f*eace with time ; He crowns the seers ! 
139 



14© PEACE 

We! — we poor mortals are but young. 

Nor do we die; our lives are sprung 
From an immortal race, so sorrow 
Draws its swift pangs from Time's to-morrow. 

The spirit, all-imperious, longs, 
And for such longings pays its fee; 
It strains its vision, fain to see 
Veiled vistas of eternity ! 

And so strange music fills our songs. 



THE NEW YEAR'S LEGACY 

FROM the old year to the new 
Goes a message, flies a message, 
Like a winged thought, to you, 

New year; I, the old year, presage 
Many gifts; I cannot name them; 
Rapturous joys, I would not tame them. 

Joys to you 
From the old year to the new ! 

I, the old year, to the new, 

Send you greeting, send you greeting; 
Dying, I bequeath to you 

Spring's sweet tide with blossoms fleeting; 
Spring, with happy omens laden. 
Heart of lover, heart of maiden, 

Sent to you, 
From the old year to the new. 

I, the old year, to the new. 

Send you Summer, passioned Summer; 
Dying, 1 bequeath to you 

Ripening noons, and throbbing murmur 
141 



142 THE NEW YEAR'S LEGACY 

Of fair nature's lavish blisses, 
Quickened by the hot sun's kisses, 

Sent to you. 
From the old year to the new. 

1, the old year, to the new. 

Send you Autumn, bounteous Autumn; 
Dying, I bequeath to you 

Golden fruits, and favors brought from 
The Orient and the Indies; 
And from all the world 1 send these 

Gifts to you. 
From the old year to the new. 

I, the old year, to the new. 
Send you Winter, hoary Winter; 

Dying, I bequeath to you. 
Stored with all things Time has sent her. 

Winter, hale, whose glittering garment 

Robes the earth, like some pure star, meant 
To light you 

From the old life to the new ! 



THE REIGN OF MARS 

HE stands colossal, armed and strong, 
With star-decked breast, for right or wrong. 
In midst of Europe's subject-throng; 

The challenger in tragic deeds, 
The victor in heroic song ! 

At his behest the legions band ; 
Send trumpeters through all the land; 
Unsheathe the sword with iron hand. 
To make him umpire of the world; 
The crowned heads bow at his command! 

On all the waters steel fleets wait, 
Mailed warders over gulf and strait, 
Clad and complete for their grim fate; 

They hold the ocean's highways bond 
In name of one so weak, so great! 

The shields of empires guard his fame; 
He herald, dread, of death and shame ; 
While armored champions proclaim, 

From realm to realm, to prince and slave, 
The magic lustre of his name ! 
143 



144 THE REIGN OF MARS 

Who dares defy him ? — he 's the King! 
Who dares deny him offering ? 
Who dares to parley ? who to bring 
One rebel word to mar his reign, 
Or dauntless deed, or anything ? 

From Algiers to the Arctic seas, 
From th' Orient to the Hebrides, 
The Saxon, Slav, and Japanese, 

Beneath his banner, at his feet, 
Bend loyal to his dark decrees. 

His is the arm to smite and kill; 
The blood of ages marks his skill 
On countless battle-fields, until 

The coming of the Prince of Peace, 
The crowning of His Liege's will! 

Then Thou, Almighty, on Thy throne, 
Wilt draw all sceptres to Thine Own; 
Wilt reign supreme and reign alone; 

And he shall fall as Satan fell; 
He, lord of Carnage, falling prone ! 



THY THOUGHT OF ME 

THY thought of me ? 'T is but a chance, 
Conveyed in thy sheer look, askance, 
As some swift birdling in its flight 
Might skim across the skyey light. 
Then vanish in the blue expanse. 

For who am I thou wouldst entrance ? 
My name thou scarce would deign indite, 
Nor murmur to me in a dance. 

Thy thought of me. 

But thou to me ? A heart's romance! 

Thy vision stirs with strange delight; 

I dream of thee in mid of night. 
Until alas! like some death-lance, 
My soul impales, with inward glance. 
Thy thought of me. 



145 



WERE I IN LOVE 

WERE I in love I would not go 
As suppliant in thy train, and so 
Be servile courtier by thy grace, 
Enamored of thy form and face. 
Pleading for favor, stooping low. 

Thy vanity should never know 

One specious word, or fawning show 

Of flattery and fulsome praise. 

Were I in love. 

But with a constancy of glow, ^ 

With tireless will, — with blow on blow, 
I 'd fight to win for thee a place 
Befitting in the proud world's race, 
Then love thee, have thee, yes or no, 
Were I in love! 



146 



THE WANDERER 

LOVE returns to its home again; 
Love, that in silent years of pain, 
Haunted, e'en as a pallid thing, 
Giving no sign of its suffering; 
Love — the old, old Love that was slain I 

I feel its plaint as if 't were fain 
To free itself where it had lain ; 
Beating, to loose its fettered wing. 
Love returns! 

I ween, O Love, nor thong nor chain 
Can hold thee, nor thy heart restrain; 
Nay, any arts that earth could bring, 
Or Time, the despot, tethering 
With golden links, are vain, are vain. 
Love returns! 



147 



WHEN NIGHT STEALS ON 

WHEN night steals on, then day's dull care 
Glides from me, borne in half despair 
For its stern duty and demand ; 
And luring, as with some witch wand, 
Enchantments inly draw me, where, 

Lulled as by spirit-touch, I share, 
Mute-voiced, such dreams as seem like prayer; 
And music floats from fairy-land. 
When night steals on. 

Then sinks the twilight's waning glare; 

Then still stars gleam in misty air; 
And walking, silent, on the strand 
Together, two, we understand, — 

We, listening to the sea surge there. 
When night steals on ! 



148 



MY FAIR SIXTEEN 

MY Fair Sixteen, I know, I know. 
"Time flies," we're told; but is it so? 
Nay, rather like some blind ground-mole, 
It bores a subterranean hole 
Beneath our feet, — a secret foe. 

If it had pinions, high and low 
We 'd hunt it, trusting Cupid's bow; 
Or clip its wings and steal its toll, 
My Fair Sixteen. 

But now we know not where to go ; 
It springs its hidden mines, or lo 

It pierces to our very soul 

And feasts upon our life-blood's dole, 
But not on thine, O no, O no, 
My Fair Sixteen! 



149 



TRUE EMINENCE 

TRUE Eminence, I know thy place; 
Thou dwellest in unblazoned ways, 
A lone retreat removed from town 
Where thou art chary of renown, 
Nor challengest in any race. 

Thou hast an easy charm of grace 
(Dissembling not in heart nor face), 
And dignity without the gown. 
True Eminence. 

No wily flatterers shall trace 

Thee to thy quiet nook, where space 

And freedom are alike thine own; 

Thy nice sincerity would frown 
On these, as tricksters in disgrace, 
True Eminence. 



150 



STOIC-WISE 

BE still, O heart! so prone to heat; 
Be cold, aloof, and dull to greet; 
Be loth, demurring, stoic- wise; 
Hark thee! guard well thy brusque disguise; 
Be thou inexorably discreet. 

Dost thou not know how cruel-sweet 
It is to crush beneath one's feet 
The fellow-soul that pleading, lies ? 
Be still, O heart! 

Thou dost protest, as it were meet 
To let thy prisoned pity cheat 

Thy stoic will and brim the eyes. 

What if the pierced heart breaks and dies ? 
O Love, O Love, stay thy quick beat! 
Be still, O heart! 



151 



I WATCHED AND WATCHED 

THE ship was free with the flooding tide ; 
Swung from moorings, the river to ride ; 
The stern bent north, the stem to the sea. 
As it bore my own away from me 
To the underworld and the ocean, wide. 

My lips were brave and even defied 
My heart, bereft, as it throbbed and sighed ! 
1 watched and watched till I could not see. 

The ship was free ! 

Far down past city and isles it plied, 

Till only faintly could be descried. 
Like a vision dimmed in memory. 
Fading and fading fast from the lea,— 

The ship, with the Dear Ones, deified. 

The ship was free! 



152 



IN THE HUSHED GLOAMING 

IN the hushed gloaming, when the dying light 
Gleams soft appealings to her inly sight, 
She sits alone and watches o'er the bay; 
The shadows deepen with the ebb of day, 
Her tranced spirit blending with the night. 

Lo, in the utter stillness of its flight, 
The pallid moon, of mildly argent white, 
Steals, lonely, on its solitary way 

In the hushed gloaming! 

Her heart, in homage, owns its lenient might. 
And vows a votive token to its bright 

And beauteous vision ; chastened thoughts betray 

A silver lining, lured by its ray. 
Her couchant being thrills with veiled delight 

In the hushed gloaming! 



153 



I WATCHED HER READ 

I WATCHED her read a song of mine; 
She paused, then scanned it line by line; 
A smile suffused her face, I guessed 
Of irony than interest; 
Than this — she gave no other sign. 

Whatever thought she might enshrine 
I lacked the vision to divine; 
And yet with still lips closely pressed 
I watched her read. 

There seemed unconsciously to shine, 
Through softer eyes, a spell, benign; 

And secretly, as some strange guest 

Intruding on her silent quest, 
A tear fell; with what joy, divine, 

I watched her read! 



154 



M 



RETOUR A LA VIE 

ALLEGORIQUE 

Y beautiful Rose, scarce yet in its plume, 
I folded and laid in a cloisteral room 
Of my errant heart; and I said: " O Rose, 
I will hold thee fast in memory's close; 
I '11 lay thee away in the drear, dim gloom : 

*' Thou wilt droop and die and death will consume 
Thy beauty ere yet thy lavish perfume 

Will charge dear memory ; for no one knows — 
My beautiful Rose! " 

Time wrought a change in its mutable loom. 
And 1 said: " 1 '11 go to the desolate tomb 
Of my pale, dead rose, in its still repose, 
And pay it the tribute that memory owes." 
When, Lo, in the tomb — see! see! — in full bloom. 
My beautiful Rose ! 



155 



BEAUTY 

ANOINT my sight that I may see thee, Fair, — 
Daughter of Light from out the marvellous 
skies, — 
Beauty, whose form in this frail image dies ; 
Anoint my sight, that when 1 plead how rare 
Of grace thou art, I yet may not despair 
Of knowing the divinity thine eyes 
Reflect to me from yon veiled Paradise, 
The peerless spirit of thee dwelling there. 

O could my blinded vision cleave the clay 

That shields thee, Queen, beyond my mortal gaze. 

And snatch a glimpse of thee on that highway 
Of thy soul's birth, in immemorial days. 

Then to thy very self 1 'd token bring 

Of which this thought is but vain shadowing! 



156 



CASTALY 

I'D fain be drunk with the waters of thine, 
Drinking till stars in my vision shone bright; 
Till night challenged day in excess of light, 
And rapture resolved to sorrow, divine. 
Then I 'd sing to the world a song of mine. 
Aflame with the fire of my soul's delight; 
A song uplifting my soul by its might, 
Exalting my soul by the mead of its wine ! 

I would smite the chords of prodigal life, 
Of ecstasy charged with passion and prayer. 
The tragic and glad that equally share 

The spirit with which they are nobly rife; 
So life would become a gloria day 
Wherein my song would conquer its way ! 



157 



TO OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 

ONCE thou didst sing of "Silent Melody," 
Of stringless harp, of weird and broken bard 
Whom ruthless Time, with withering hand, and 
hard. 
Had stricken low until, in plaintive plea 
(Though 'reft of voice to sing or eyes to see). 
He craved once more to touch the vanished chord, 
To dream the old songs back, and hear th' award 
That floated in his wandering memory. 
Not thou, O no! not thou; thou ne'er didst feel 
The touch of Time; nor see through glimmering 
eyes; 
Nor let thy lyre fall stringless at thy feet; 
Nor thy clear voice forget its joyance, leal ; 
Nor flashing thought to lose its cunning, wise; 
. 'T is Time, not thou, that, conquered, owns 
defeat. 



158 



WINTER WOODS 

THE silence in the woods weighs heavily 
These winter days, scarce broken by the tread 
Of timid feet on foliage fallen dead. 
Hushed are the notes that erst, in earlier glee, 
Sent messages of love from tree to tree ; 
Stilled, the once whispering leafage overhead. 
Vanished are these like golden years long fled; 
Like friends of yore who never more shall be. 
Instead, O glory of the sinking day 
Whose hectic fires have burned to embers, low! 
O arctic brook that hastens to the sea! 
O life o'erborne of time and mute decay! 
Ye seem to challenge me, like some dread foe, 
To ghostly visions of mortality! 



159 



IN MOUNTAIN MIST 

O DREARY day! " they said; "O lonely place!" 
The great Leviathans were wrapt in doom; 

A mountain mist had robed the cliffs in gloom; 
Scarce could we see each other face to face; 
The rocks were hung in folds of magic lace, 

Spun by wild nature's craft, and in her loom. 

"O lonely place!" Yes, to the dead a tomb! 
But for the living, here the soul might trace 
The grandeur of the everlasting hills; 

We could not see them, yet, like tragedy. 
They overbore the spirit of our wills; 

Awful, as when we hear the soundless sea! 
Then, as a vision, through the earthly mist 
Heaven flamed in sheen of gold and amethyst. 



i6o 



WAS IT A DREAM ? 

WAS it a dream ? and was she spectral-born ? 
Only the phantom of a day unknown; 
An apparition, pale, not mine to own; 
Conjured in memory of some myth, forlorn ; 
She — whose eyes challenged e'en the rosy morn ? 
Did not her being, shaped of love alone, 
Glide, beauteous, to my throbbing bosom's 
throne, 
Fair as a vision, fadeless and unshorn ? 

That day — nay, not illusive ! O that day 
When Love's dawn to my waiting senses came, 

A nirnbus lightened up my winged way 
And left in starry characters her name ! 

A peerless face and form it left; and yet, 

Was it a dream ? — and cannot 1 forget ? 



i6i 



THE GIANT AND THE PIGMIES 

A GNARLED oaken log, with flinty heart, 
Lies on the hearth, besieged by snapping pine; 
The one, like some great fortress, gives no sign 
Of yielding; all the woods with venom dart 
Their fire-shots, smiting here and there, which start 
The blazon-armored giant; work so fine 
They do that not a single joint escapes; mine 
On mine explodes with atomic skill and art. 
Ah, these shall conquer, pigmies though they are; 
The powers which crush, themselves shall fall at 
last. 
Inert with spoil and surfeited with lust. 
The mighty crumble in the fiery war, — 
E'en in the mimic, Liliputian blast, — 
The mighty, weighted with earth's shale and dust. 



162 



TO-DAY! 

THE world, to-day, is all for clamorous deeds, 
Delirious for action ; fevered feet 
Go hurrying through the city's trammelled street, 
And hands, outstretched, are clutching gilded weeds ; 
Weak men, fore-spent, lean hard on treacherous reeds. 
O what to have, to do, to drink, and eat ! 
More gold, more marts for spoil they grasp and 
greet ; 
For these men suffer, — martyrs to their greeds; 
For these! Ah me, my soul turns sad at thought 
Of life bent to the slave-task of this age; 
Of life, so charged with fire and winged with 
song! 
How shall it answer, since itself has wrought 
The pitiless shackles ? Prisoned in a cage, - 
The spirit, sore distraught, ill brooks the wrong! 



163 



WINTER IN THE ADIRONDACKS 

THE hills are white and silent. Lo, the lakes, 
Immured in crystal tombs, lie still and prone; 
The hoary forests, storm-clad, grieve and groan. 
Whene'er the frost-spurred tempest, lawless, breaks 
From yonder mountain fastnesses, and makes 
For cloistered solitudes, you hear it moan 
As 't were in pain; yet list the lyric tone 
Of the brooklet's echo as it awakes 
In rocky caves ! 

"Silent," did I say ? Nay, 
Nature 's never silent. From hollow grotes 
To loftiest pinnacle her voices rise; 
She, too, like man, is troubled night and day ! 
But 'midst the lonely sadness of her notes 
Does not her heart dream of its paradise ? 



164 



THE TWO SISTERS 

O FAITH, who fain wouldst harbor sleepless 
doubt; 
Cloud-veiled in shadow gloomier than eve 
When night draws near; whose fearful heart doth 
grieve, 

Doth pant and pale as beacon fires die out! 

O Faith, revive; peer through the dusk; go shout 
For thy sweet sister, Love, to bring relief. 
With her diviner wand — to lost belief; 

With her high mystery of truth to rout 

All hovering broods that smother thy pure light; 
To save thee to thine own, thou Heavenly heir! 

Then shall thy lustre gild again the night, 
While Love's leal breast doth bear thee so to share, 

Through all the travail of thine earthly stress. 

Thy victories, forth to everlastingness! 



165 



EN ROUTE 

WHAT bitterness is this that girts with bands 
My visionary thought, that frowns at my 
glad dream, 
That clips my magic sail when kind fates seem 
To send fleet messengers from Heaven ? Fair lands 
Lie prone beyond my gaze ; my outstretched hands, 
Upborne, would grasp Hesperian fruits that gleam 
As golden apples, where yon luring beam 
Gilds happy shores, till my quick soul expands. 

What bitterness ? Ah, this: that ere the bound 
Of my plumed paradise is won, or heart 
Can garner to itself the glittering prize. 
My baffled barque shall circle round and round, 
Turn leaward, backward, lose its starry chart. 
Plunge through lashed seas, — then, then at last to 
rise! 



i66 



" O GLORY IN THE GLOOM ! " 

THE shadows fall and make a dimning blur; 
A foot-fall on the path would seem like tread 
Of marching warders ; Dians, forest-bred, 
Steal to the solitudes; hushed is the stir 
Of bird-wing or of human tide; the whir 
Of day is silenced; hurrying life has fled; 
Winds sink to rest, and light is forfeited 
Mid the dark vales, the oaks, the denser fir. 

But just as suns sink low and crimsons fade. 

When earth goes glimmering downward to the 
night, 

Then dawns, within the mystic, cloisteral shade, 
That luminous ray — the spirit's inly light. 

O glory in the gloom ! O imagery 

Transcending gift of Heaven to dawning day ! 



167 



REGRETS ! 

YE come unbidden, when the tide is low 
That erst had flooded my unchallenged days, 
And leave me even bleak of heart, whose stays 
Of love and faith are shorn and shaken so 
That I had rather doubt, I ween, than know, 
Till fear and hope encounter, and life weighs. 
Ye come unbidden ; and your shadow stays 
Athwart my spirit like a bitter woe! 

Regrets ! Regrets ! Ye are as dim defiles 
Which suns nor warm, nor moon nor stars illume; 

Where love fains not, nor dearest joy beguiles — 
(Whose days are darker than the dreaded doom). 

These, these, like exiles to far ocean isles. 
Are banished when Regrets diffuse their gloom ! 



i68 



WHITE FACE 

ALPINE in height, a towering form, it lies 
Against the blue, colossal in the morn; 
And haply now the foamy clouds, o'erborne, 
Shall veil its summit on the eastern skies; 
And now the gentler airs shall whisper sighs, 
Or the imperious tempest-storm, forlorn. 
Whirl o'er its grim ravines and rock-ribs, shorn; 
Yet, lo! it stands immutable, defies 
The passion-throes of earth! 

Symbol of power, 
It breasts the heavens ; and when the shadows fall, 
When vales are blurred in dusk, watching, I see 
A nimbus clinging, like a golden shower, 
On its white brow. Even so, when truth shall pall 
On lesser souls, the great seem rapt and free ! 



l6g 



LOWELL 

O LAUREATE, thou hast past; a hush more deep 
Than sorrow's sacred pall falls on thy rest; 
Love follows thee and mourns, with mute behest, 
Thy silenced voice and thy last, unvexed sleep; 
The elms about thine " Elmwood " droop and weep; 
The birds, aggrieving, fold their wings to nest; 
Yet more than these, how must thy loss invest 
And pierce the heart in its lone, brooding keep! 

No more the music from thy lips shall wake 
In myriad strains; no more thy words shall fall 

On charmed ears, nor thy great spirit break 

On waiting souls whom thou wast wont t' enthral. 

Yet, Poet, thou hast sung immortal songs 

Which shall forever thrill the world's vast throngs! 



170 



ON THAT GLAD DAY 

HOW shall we seem, each to the other, when, 
On that glad day, immortal, we shall meet — 
Thou who, erstwhile, didst pass with hastening 
feet; 
I, who still wait here, in the haunts of men ? 
Speech — we shall need it not, nor language, then ; 
Nor troth, which here conveyed its passion sweet; 
Nor any signal from loved lips, to greet 
In happy seal of loyalty. 

Then, ken 
Of the spirit, vision of the soul, will tell. 

More than ecstatic pleadings in lost years; 
More than our trysting, with its magic spell; 

Or faltering faith, half-perjured by pale fears. 
From these all dross will then have fallen away, 
And peerless love shall flood our souls that day! 



171 



PEACE 

THE summits of the great hills yonder, raised 
By vast upheavals, wrecks of Nature's throes, 

Now touch, or seemingly, the sunset's rose, — 
Calm with a peace on which our eyes have gazed, — 
A peace whose marvel beauty lips have praised 

Through all the years. Could we but brave the 
woes 

That else would blight our joys, the spirit knows 
That we might even feel our souls a-dazed 
At the great peace upborne from grievous wrecks 

Of other days ; a peace inborn alone 
Of overbearing pain, whose dark reflex 

At last — though how, we know not — can atone, 
Through leagues of time, in beauty bathed in light, 
For all the sorceries of our fearful night! 



172 



DEATH— LIFE 

THOU, Foremost, standing on the highest plane, 
Wise leader in the land, and nobly great, 

In priceless virtues blest and consecrate, 
By one swift, awful messenger art slain ! 
Slain! (Horror hatched in demon-heart and brain. 

Hating the right with hell's infernal hate.) 

Thou knowest now the love which crowns thy 
fate. 
Which crowns thy death, — ^the stricken nation's pain; 
Thou knowest now the reverence, leal, the woe, 

The sorrowing, by countless millions borne; 
Thou knowest more than mortal e'er shall know — 

Shorn of thy dust, in thy triumphal morn — 
Of joy eternal; — destiny God-given 
To thee, great soul, within the gates of heaven! 



173 



RENUNCIATION 

OCOME to me again! Vain, vain recall! 
Beyond the veil of nameless years I hear 

Thy voice as music in a dream ; so dear 
That every pulse, impassioned of Love's thrall, 
Beats wildly with heartrending! All in all 

Wert thou ; alas, now strange to me, and drear 

Must ever be the lonely days; each year 
That passes rears 'twixt us a higher wall! 
Nay, never more — O never more — can be 

The tremulous word once whispered to thee. 
Sweet ; 
And never more the trysts, as hopeless we 

Go separate! We may not — must not — meet, 
Though Love for Love anhungered be to death, 
Pleading its longing with its last, lost breath ! 



174 



BROKEN GODS 

GAZE backward thou into the slumb'rous past; 
With eyes averted scan the vista, long, 
Down the dim aisles where once thy faith was 
strong, 
In which, alas, so many wrecks were cast! 
What dost thou to thyself confess at last ? 

These broken gods — to whom do they belong ? 
And are they worth the tribute of a song, — 
Lost loves despoiled by Time's iconoclast ? 
What hold have they on thee — discarded things ? 
Yet when they claim a token, will thy heart 
Dare cast them off as alien ? Will it dare 
Disown them — ^these thy virgin offerings. 
Now wrought into thy being as a part 
Of thy diviner self— e'en share for share ? 



175 



TO WINTER 

WAIT, Winter, haste not; stand aloof awhile. 
Why need'st thou chill the melancholy days 

With thine untimely shroud ? Nay, let me gaze 
With eyes that love to see the dying smile, 
The sad sunshines that soften and beguile 

The sense, and watch the witchery of haze 

That lingers like a web in autumn ways. 
To snare the painted fringe of forest-aisle. 
Aye, stay thy frost-touch, Winter; rude thou art. 

Let the gold harvest-moons, resplendent, reign ; 
Let Indian-summer warm its hectic heart 

And dream itself the tropics once again; 
Delay thine office ! When the prone earth lies 
An empty waste, then close dead Autumn's eyes. 



176 



THE QUEEN OF SONG 

THE Queen came, gently bred, shrinking and soft 
Of voice; with no armed warders — nay, nor 
knight — 

To herald her benign and beauteous might; 
No torches flared; no banners waved aloft 
To signal her approach ; no helmets — doft — 

Paid tribute as to one enshrined in light; 

Alone she came in unemblazoned night, 
Plain clad, anhungered, and impoverished oft, 
Yet Queen above all others; royal-crowned 

She came, and carved her name in deathless song! 
Her magic wand all other sovereigns owned; 

Her regal gifts to all the world belong! 
Forever Queen, — even when empires fall, — 
Since she is throned within the hearts of all! 



177 



EVOLUTION 



THE hours are leaden; shadows fall mid-day; 
Athwart my steps the ominous twilights creep; 

The sorrowing skies, o'ercharged with grieving, 
weep; 
And grave is now the heart that once was gay. 
O blithesome spell gone sad! O wiser May! 

The first fool's paradise, wherein would leap, 

At touch of lute, the dancing feet, to reap 
The halcyon joys while rosy fancies play, 
Has vanished. Pondering, with timid tread, 

Slow-footed, wearied with a weight of lore. 
Bent with a seer's ripe crown — a silvered head, 

Lo, Knowledge limps where Folly danced before! 
O dream of youth! O ignorance sublime! 
So mocked, when thought allies itself with time! 



Thus knowledge halts; the brooding mind abides 
Bewildered and in doubt, a skeptic still; 
It questions — as a baffled huntsman will 

178 



EVOLUTION 179 

The secret covert where the deer-herd hides — 
Betwixt the courses; then its search divides; 

Tries, but faint-heartedly, with faltering skill, 

To guess where, haply, waits the prize, until 
Its morrow morn its yesterdays derides. 
But Wisdom comes at last, the Siren, old. 

With radiance crowned, to light her sacred aisle; 
By subtile alchemy her thought of gold 

O'er-treasures worlds of feathery dross and wile; 
Serene, with dauntless steps, she hastes to greet 
The day; lo, Knowledge kneeling at her feet! 



DEC 16 1902 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



015 873 133 2 



iiW'"' 



